


In the Grand Scheme of Things

by Siarhei_of_the_Swamp



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Conspiracy, Detective, Gen, Government Agencies, Government Conspiracy, POV Multiple, Politics, noir
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 54,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siarhei_of_the_Swamp/pseuds/Siarhei_of_the_Swamp
Summary: A hard-boiled, James Ellroy-inspired story of crime and politics set during the Clone Wars. A Coruscant Security detective gets a major promotion in exchange for his conscience. A fear-poisoned merc learns a major secret -- and gets all the headache that comes with it. Will they murder each other or form a dysfunctional team first and then murder each other?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	1. Vad Alnam I

“... and while you drag yourself to get your morning hit of cafstim, while the yawning senators come together to discuss what else we can do for our Republic, while the pipes of the Factory District blow away our weather control taxes -- we here at _CorJatz_ have never gone to bed in the first place. Everything for our listeners. Everything for you. Good morning, Coruscant.”

Good morning, Vad Alnam.

Got a bad night, haven’t you? A night shift -- as if you haven’t worked nights all through the last week. Two calls: Fobosi and the southern campus. An assault and a rape. A great job you’ve got. Sleeping at work is an old legend at this point.

Time to go home, but things ain’t any better there. It’s funny to even think you still got a home. But it’s time to go there, no matter what you call it and what you fear you’ll start calling it. Time to write reports that no one would ever read unless some mad archeologist digs up ancient archives of CorSec in a thousand years. Some novel it would be. A very everyday one. Should you put in somewhere on the margins, specially for that poor bastard: I was Vad Alnam, and my life took a bad turn?

“Alnam, come in,” says Captain Swauri.

 _I’m leaving,_ Alnam wants to say. _Leave me be, I’m leaving._

He goes into Swauri’s office. Swauri looks nervous. Swauri looks old. Swauri looks as if he hasn’t slept all night too. Lamps are alight in his office even though the sun has already risen -- when Alnam sits down, he lays his left hand right on the border between light and no-light. His pinkie and ring finger bathe in warmth.

“There’s some business for you,” the captain says.

“With all due respect, sir--”

The captain raises his hand. “Some unofficial business. We’ve talked about your transfer--”

Alnam gets jittery against his will. His hands start moving on the armrests -- the sun has reached his middle finger.

“We have,” he says in a calm voice. “I was told it was not a possibility.”

The captain watches him. Weighs him up. Judges him.

“There’s info on an anti-Republic propaganda case. It comes right from the brass. I wanted you to know.”

“I believe, sir, I couldn’t have made myself clearer on how I view ideological work.”

“Not just any propaganda, mind. CIS propaganda. That’s the info.”

“Why’s the case unofficial, then?” Alnam doesn’t want to know. This is what happens when you can’t say no: you start asking questions that don’t interest you.

“We,” the captain pauses, “we assume that it’s a case of misunderstanding on, well, a journo’s part. That is, no malign intent is present. No need to make it public. Let alone that the very essence of these accusations is rather sensitive.”

“Sir, can I speak my mind?”

Swauri gestures meekly: go ahead.

“Sir, I don’t find myself capable of doing what... what you are about to ask me to do. You know my stance on the war. I’m sure there are people in the department who--”

“Alnam, it’s not about politics. It’s about libel. Harmful and disgusting libel. It’s not only harmful to the Republic, it hurts people. Think about people, not institutions.”

“I don’t find myself--”

“Six grand.”

There you go. Note the inflation, descendants.

“Why I’m telling you this is because I was specifically told there might be a place for you in the Domestic Security. Think about your father. Think about how you could help him.”

Can’t argue with that, can you?

“You mean the brass wanted me on this case?”

“Why are you so surprised? You’ve got a good reputation, Vad. You’re a good detective. The Force could use you.”

“If I proved I don’t share my father’s views.”

Swauri raises his eyebrows and nods. Slightly.

“You know me, Alnam. You know I’d never ask any of my people to do something I’d refuse to do myself. Do you really think anybody there,” he points up, “would? All you need to do is explain to this newsman why his little article is banthashit. The sooner it’s forgotten, the better. I’ll send you all the info you need. You’re on it?”

Alnam says nothing.

“Six grand is six grand, Alnam. Six grand and what’s better, an opportunity to leave this shithole.” Swauri grins. “It is one, and I know it better than you.”

“Alright,” says Alnam. “Send the materials.”

“Take care of it today. You can have a comp day tomorrow.”

.

.

.

HOLOMATERIAL: ARTICLE FROM _THE HONEST HARBINGER,_ 14:5:6

_Patriotism or Promiscuity: Paladin and Politician’s Pretty Pranks_

by Kram Midduk

As all the respected readers of our one and only _Harbinger_ know or can correctly conjecture, the grandiose Galactic Senate is not just a place for super-important hearings and stability-saving councils, but also for the less-savory plots of playful politicians. Sexual scandals and escapades in the Senate have made sensation so many times that only an inexperienced, illiterate, or ignominious ignoramus can be surprised by yet another use found for the famous halls of the Founders.

But today’s case, dear dames and gentlemen, is well beyond the ordinary fare, for _The Harbinger’s_ holocams have espied not some self-disinterested senators from distant systems but the perfect princess of an oppressed (in the past) planet on whose life there were more attempts than on my own abrasive and atrocious appearance. I talk, of course, about the Naboo Senator Padmé Amidala, once elected queen for her brown locks and beautiful looks.

As it happens, abstinence does not accompany the life in the reticle of millions of cameras -- and that’s to say nothing of the hirelings of the noble who cannot take “no” for an answer. One thing it would be if the Senator’s spooner and stress-relief was someone from her circle, but alas! _The Harbinger’s_ exclusive shots demonstrate the social distance so damnably dreadful between the dearies that even our dreadnaughts don’t dream of covering it in a dozen days.

The sweetheart of the spoiled senator, as we see, is not an interchangeable diplomat but an indoctrinated Jedi! Let us not forget that celibacy and self-control are inseparable from the very Jedi teachings themselves, so, says _The Harbinger,_ the fall from virtue is felt twice as sharply. Here is what Senator Amidala and her Jedi friend are up to in the politician’s apartment.

Decency defenders will, of course, point out that no proof of fornication is present. To such pessimists, we proclaim: yet! Don’t you doubt it, Senator: _The Harbinger_ will highlight your hot and hair-raising hedonism and hand out holoshots of it to the last hobo!

Answer anticipated: who of the ancient order turned out an apostate? Our shocking shots dispel any shroud of uncertainty: although the face of the frivolous fetishist is obscured, his remarkable hand is a dead giveaway -- literally dead, because there is no life in the soulless metal. (Here in _The Harbinger_ we hope that life has not left the rest of the hunk). And -- what a coincidence! -- Padmé’s constant companion, that is, Anakin Skywalker, the hero of the Republic, a daring and dashing Jedi, is one heroic hand short after a skirmish -- spicy! -- with the very same Separatist sage who has sent so many mercenaries after the Nabooan nymphet. What makes us wonder is how often the mechanized appendage finds its way into the sacrosanct and top-secret senatorial places!

Soon, this mystery shall be revealed to the Galaxy -- thanks to _The Honest Harbinger_ and yours truly, Kram Midduk.

.

.

.

The trip to the editor’s takes more time than Alnam hoped. While the police speeder hangs in a jam, cars on all sides, all he can do is reread the article and Swauri’s addendum. Swauri writes: “No refutations; there was no article”. Makes sense. Alnam wonders if the idea is the captain’s or was given to him by his -- their -- employers.

Six thousand credits -- mind the inflation -- sound niiiiiiiiice. The vague whiff of a promise -- Domestic Security -- sounds even better. Alnam feels hope -- for the first time in days. Six thousand. Should be enough to hire Smates. Just a consultation would suffice. He knows his jurisprudence. Just needs a couple hints on family legislation.

The police droid moves the speeder in jerks, jumping to any free spot he notices. His voice module has been out of commission -- almost for a year now.

Alnam orders the speeder stopped two levels away from the editor’s office. Walks down the street and takes a public elevator. These are still the uppers, but the very lowest end of them.

A hard-to-notice entrance: _The Honest Harbinger’s_ office. Alnam thinks it’s done on purpose.

A beaten-down protocol droid greets him, “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’d like to see Kram Midduk, if that’s possible.”

“Unfortunately, mister Midduk is not currently available. Can I take a message for him?”

“Better tell me where he is available.”

“I’m afraid, sir, I am not at liberty to disclose that.”

Alnam nods. Leaves. Runs a background check on Midduk. Here he is: a Quarren, male, 39. Two previous records: both for possession. Address: Beshka Street, 38-22-1. Not far from the Crimson Corridor. Great place. The day keeps on giving. No family, lives alone. Alnam cringes.

All the less hope to get in bed by midday.

He sends the police car to Beshka Street and takes a bus. It’s hot and crowded. Alnam’s shirt sticks to the seat.

Five levels down from the bus stop. You can still see the sun here, but go a few levels deeper, and it’s gone. Alnam walks in the hall of 38-22. His hand finds the vibroknuckles in the pocket of his breeches. He thinks and lets it go.

He’s been to such buildings on his work -- maybe to this one specifically. They often have the same owner -- connected to someone in the Corridor, for one -- who rents the flophouse out to the poor and the criminals. The Raptors and the Swoop Psychos used to own the neighborhood about ten years ago. Now the Raptors are all but gone and the Psychos have merged into one gang with several others.

Watch the doors. Watch the elevator. Watch the graffiti. Analyze. Graffiti:

_With spice you live twice_

_I’M THE DEVOURER_

_Fuck you and fuck me_

_We’re all fucked brother_

_Call me if you want good very well time and cheap for you_

Also: crude drawings of nude females of at least four different species. Gang tags. Standard fare. The elevator door is broken. The stairway is submerged in rubbish. Empty bottles.

Alnam finds himself sympathizing with Midduk: sniffing the celebrities’ farts is the only window he has into a better world.

The door to the apartment one. Doorbell, microphone, speaker. No camera. Gooooood. Alnam puts his hand to the bell button. The sound is audible outside -- the doors here might be thick, but the walls are paper-thin.

He keeps ringing until the speaker goes hissing and the lodger of Beshka, 38-22-1 answers, “Who’s there?”

Alnam activates a jammer. All the man on the other side can hear is electric noise.

“What the hell?” the speaker asks.

The jammer: turn it up. “From the office,” says Alnam.

The door slides to the side -- juuuuust a bit, but that’s all Alnam needs. His years in the field are gone, but he hasn’t grown too much fat since. He slips through the opening and pushes the Quarren in. Before the journalist can react, Alnam closes the door.

“Mister Midduk? I’m not here to do you any harm.”

“Do you know how many times I was beaten after hearing this shit?” Midduk’s tentacles writhe around his chest, but the voice is calm.

“Am I beating you right now? No, and I’ve no reason to start.”

Watch. He watches. The apartment is dirty. Crammed with holotapes and bottles. The kitchen is visible from the entrance. The bedroom, too. No one there. The door into the bathroom is half-open. Alnam opens it fully: no hiding friends there as well.

“Then what?”

“I’m here on an unofficial visit.”

“That goes badly with the no-beating thing.”

“Nothing goes badly for you -- yet. It will if other people make an official visit.”

Midduk’s eyes shoot left and right. Goooood. He’s trying to remember what wrongdoing might have got him here.

“It’s about your article. Promiscuous politicians, you know.”

“That’s my shtick. Be clearer.”

“The latest. The Nabooan senator and the Jedi. Remember now?”

“I might.”

“Good. You see, mister Midduk, some people have found it not only tasteless -- that, I suppose, is also your shtick -- but also giving a black eye to both the Senate and the Order.”

“Articles don’t give no one black eyes, people like you usually do. It’s not my fault they can’t keep their parts in pants.”

“Spare me your alliteration. It’s not my fault, either. You see, personally, I don’t give a damn what people write or read. But the special services? In the war time? Please. You won’t find more attentive readers in a book club. They’re really good at reading between the lines, too. It appears that “high treason” and “Separatist propaganda” are most often printed in those betweens.”

The journo winces as if from a slap. Good... keep it steady, Vad. Don’t push him too much.

“I hope you realize how grave your situation is. I’m here to help you keep it figurative. I could go to your editor, you know? But here I am, willing to help you. I’m of the opinion it’s better to prevent than to punish.”

“Do you want a refutation? Alright. _The Herald..._ ”

“No, mister Midduk. You don’t need to do anything.”

The Quarren looks at him vacantly.

“We need this story to stop escalating.”

“You should talk to the lovebirds, then.”

Alnam smiles. “Probably, but that wouldn’t do anything. Haven’t you been young? So it’s up to you to do the right thing. Don’t publish any refutations. No continuations, too. Don’t reply if anyone asks what happened next. Treat this story as a non-story. No surveillance after the senator and her friend -- that goes without saying. Come up with a new sensation. Let a wart on some washed-up movie star’s ass be your new big piece. Then you won’t have a problem.”

Midduk squirms. “There was no surveillance. I bought the pics off my buddy in _Daily Newsfeed._ It was by chance, you know. I just asked if she had any juicy shit. They don’t run this type of news in _Newsfeed._ Pela Scavastor’s the name. I know where she hangs out on Taungdays.”

“You know what, mister Midduk? I almost liked you.”

By the time Alnam reaches his speeder, no sun shines over Beshka Street.


	2. Krev Devin I

Krev Devin draws on his cigarette.

“You can’t really smoke here,” a lanky lodger tells him without stopping. Scurries inside his cell.

Krev keeps on drawing.

The eternal technogenic night of Telos IV outside the lobby’s window. They burned the surface some thousands of years ago -- one side or the other. They were all fanatics. Other fanatics have tried to restore the planet -- a few times, in fact, but they say in the Outer Rim: it’s like Telos Restoration Project. A pile of shit, that is.

Krev Devin’s life is one huge TRP.

Ships sweep by the high-rise. A spaceport nearby, one of the dark ones. Pilots don’t like landing and taking off through the poisonous clouds, but whatcha gonna do? Telos IV is a good place for refilling. For some other things, too.

Krev hears the elevator doors screech behind him. A third of the cigarette is still left, but he snubs it out on the transparisteel of the window. Turns around. Sumar walks down the corridor, rocking on his boney legs. Huffs and puffs as though he took the stairs. Sumar is an Ubb, a small fat reptilian. Got a bottle of water in his hands -- for moisturizing.

“Couldn’t get here any slower?” Krev asks. The Ubb is short as it stands, but next to Devin he looks a real dwarf.

“Inseminate yourself, Devin.” Sumar sips from the bottle. Pours some on his head. Blinks. The amphibian eyes dart around. Sumar huffs and puffs.

“Up for some work?”

“Sure am. Where did you park?”

“Three floors from here. At the municipal lot.”

Sumar nods. “Okay. We got some riding to do.”

“Then riding it is.”

They walk to the elevator. The high-rise clanks and plinks around them. The rhythm of the evening. Krev knows this rhythm, knows it too well: he grew up in the Kessel dorms.

Krev’s speeder finds its way between the equally battered speeders: the traffic of Telos IV. Condos and warehouses fly by. Point of destination: Coruscant City, the most neon-ridden district on the planet.

Sumar outlines the situation. “Some anti-Republic nonsense.”

“Here?”

“Here and everywhere else. Telos’s a good place to drop off the radar. You should know.”

Krev shrugs.

“That’s how it is. I bet our target found out that some senator from Cloaca XIX loves little boys’ cloacae or something.”

“That counts as anti-Republic to you?”

“Don’t get yourself so worked up, I’m just guessing. Maybe it’s some embezzling stuff -- how should I know? The thing is, he’s talking to the wrong people. Our client has dropped some pretty interesting names.”

“Like what?”

“Like Alnam. Get it?”

Krev gets it.

Vygo Alnam. Industrial tycoon from the Core Worlds. Droids, mods, parts -- you name it. Krev has worked with an IG whose central unit was made by Alnam Robotech. Accurate son of a gear, and smart one.

Alnam sure used to be a welcome guest at all receptions in the upper echelons. Real in-crowd. Some reporters tried to accuse the Chancellor -- Valorum, not the current one -- a couple of times of promoting Alnam’s monopoly. They even got shots of the Chancellor at Vygo Alnam’s Alderaan villa -- stripped down to swim trunks and with a cocktail in hand. Went nowhere -- though maybe played a part later in Valorum’s downfall.

No receptions for Alnam now. Reason: Alnam spoke in favor of systems’ right of secession. Could’ve hinted at his opinions in the company of the likewise liberally-minded senators and stars. Did not stop there: instead, old Alnam recorded a video for the Holonet. Outspoke all his points. No one really cared before the war. Problem: he retracted nothing when it started. Then it turned out that old Alnam has never had any friends. It turned out that old Alnam was a rapist: no evidence, tons of victims.

Now Alnam is ostracized just like his pal Valorum was. Has been sitting on Sanner for around two years now with no one to keep him company save for his billions. Some say he provides the Confederate droids with hardware. Krev doesn’t believe that: has seen them at work.

“What should Alnam care?” he asks.

“You know what they say. Alnam this and Alnam that.”

A cab cuts them up. Krev hits the brakes. Sumar jumps up. A Rodian taxi driver looks into Krev’s speeder, enraged somehow. Then he floors it: he has made out Krev.

“Seems like it’s true he’s digging into the Republic,” Sumar sits back. Blinks frequently -- he could use some moisturizing, but that won’t fly in Krev’s speeder.

“How do you know?”

“I’m saying what the client told me.”

“Just up and told you, huh?”

“Extra annoying today, aren’t we, Devin? What’s it to you? We’re getting paid to meet the guy and explain to him he should stop running his mouth. Running his mouth hurts the Republic, get it?”

“Never took you for such a fucking patriot, Sumar.”

“Ah, fuck you. I just care about things. That’s the, uh, that’s the difference between the two of us.”

Krev drives in silence for a while. Then he gives in: “Why would the client tell you shit? Even if that guy meets Alnam in person, why should we know?”

“I should’ve gone alone.”

“Reach the pedals first.”

He parks the speeder at the corner where Sumar shows. Sign: _King of Corellia. Pazzak, roulette, slot machines. Bar. Striptease -- best girls of the Galaxy all in one place!_

On Coruscant -- real Coruscant -- such an establishment would stay at the lowest levels of the middle sector. Here in Coruscant City on Telos IV, it’s entertainment for the elites: freighter captains, prospectors, passing-by trade agents welcome. Anti-Republic whistleblowers. Not bad.

Krev and Sumar sit and wait in the speeder. The casino entrance is hidden behind a ribbed airlock that cars couple to. The process is slow and dangerous: the slightest depressurization fills the lungs of the customers with the air of Telos. No lethal cases yet -- in this casino.

“I figure that client of yours,” says Krev, “wants to brainwash you.”

“Next time, I’ll sure take that rabid Dug instead of you. I’d rather get cut up for five credits than listen to your drivel again.”

“Think about it: you just believed her for no reason. Now you’re gonna tell everyone how Alnam is trying to bury the Republic. That’s propaganda for you.”

“Get yourself a tinfoil hat at last. It’s you who’s talking about Alnam, not me. You in love with him or something?”

“So you just believed what you were told.”

“Better watch the entrance. A green M-31, plate number KA418.”

Krev watches for sure, but his heart’s not at ease. Doesn’t like the job. No one from Kessel likes the Republic. But it’s not like you have a choice. Nobody’s paying more for this line of work on Telos than Sumar’s contact in the administration. You know no other line of work. And you can’t leave Telos.

Eight years ago. Krev Devin is a year-after-Atnakis Krev Devin. It’s peace time in most of the Galaxy. War veterans are in high demand for certain operations. Krev Devin makes vice chief of security in a hotel on Manaan. No weapons: local traditions only allow spaceport guards and a limited number of military personnel to carry.

Some medicine conference. Krev’s being called from one of the suites. A pharma executive, a relatively young man from Ixtlar. Smiling guiltily. A twi’lek girl in his bathroom. No more than sixteen. Cigar burns all over. Traces of a rope: wrists. Neck. She’s not grown cold yet, but she will. Krev has seen her a couple of hours before loitering in the hall. Knew why she was there. Did nothing. “Our little game went too far, I’m afraid,” the exec says. “I know how guilty I am, I really do. I would like to somehow make it right with the family. Can you please make sure they get paid? Not right now, of course, after I’ve left Manaan. You’ll get your cut, I promise.”

He doesn’t seem to expect Krev to hit him.

No weapons. Krev kills him with his bare hands.

Standing over two dead bodies, Krev realizes what it’ll look like to the law: a huge Kesselian was given a chance to live a better life but it wasn’t enough for him. Started sneaking prostitutes in for rich guests. A conflict ensued with this one. Iced both the guest and the whore. Bless the privacy rights: no cameras inside the rooms. No calls to the security post will resurface as soon as they arrest him. That’s how things work on Manaan.

He walks out of the room as if nothing has happened. His knuckles: bloodied. He gets back to his post and sits there till morning when his shift ends. The next symposium is six hours away. Krev gets off the planet in nine -- in the cargo hold of a Taris-bound ship.

Then: three years on the run from cops and the exec’s friends. Turns out he was mobbed up. Rule: no killing cops. The mob -- if there’s no other way. Then: Telos IV. Republic lawmen show up there sometimes, but have a whole bunch of C’s and B’s with the local big wheels. Rule: be useful to the local big wheels. The Ixtlar outfit seems to have lost his track. Has done so before and has found it again. Not this time. Krev’s not heard of them in five years.

Krev doesn’t know if they’re still looking. In truth, he’s scared to find out. If they aren’t, he’ll have to move on, and the five sedentary years made him weak.

He refuses to use aliases: it gives him the illusion of being of control. In truth, it doesn’t help.

“There he is,” says Krev. An M-31, green, new model, takes off the landing platform a level below them. A valet wearing a gas mask pilots it: no airlocks at the parking lot.

The man who gets in the speeder has long hair. A cheap suit -- doesn’t fit the speeder. Krev only sees his back.

“Two speeder-lengths,” Sumar keeps telling him, “two speeder-lengths!”

Krev doesn’t reply.

They follow the M-31. Sumar fidgets in his seat. His little feet kick around as if it’s he who’s driving. The long-hair doesn’t fly fast. The long-hair changes the lane often. The long-hair seems to know he’s being followed. Krev checks the rearview. Krev suspects they may be followed as well. Krev opens his mouth to tell Sumar they’ve fucked up -- but says nothing.

The M-31 enters the parking lot of an apartment complex. A force field divides it and Telos -- you can breathe inside. The long-hair gets out of his airspeeder. Krev and Sumar ride past him. Park in the far end of the lot. The long-hair has scuttled to the stairs that lead to the stores, alleys, and apartments.

“Shiiiiit,” says Sumar when he sees the stairs.

They follow the long-hair. At the ground level, Krev sits down on a bench while their target enters a store. Krev squints at him across the alley.

“Go to the top floor and don’t step away from the elevator,” Krev tells him partner. “Wait for my call.”

The Ubb hobbles along to the elevator. The long-hair pays up: instant supper, a pack of beer, cigarettes. Come on, thinks Krev, go to the elevator. Nothing else here, go to the elevator already.

The long-hair goes to the elevator. Krev calls Sumar as soon as the target enters the car.

Krev watches the panel above the elevator. Can’t see the number from this far. When the spot of light goes out, he says: “Call it now. Which floor?”

“Rides up from the floor eight.”

“Go down there and wait for me.”

“Got it.”

Krev gets up and goes to the same store. Buys a six-pack. Gets in the elevator and rides up to the eighth floor.

Sumar stands next to the lift.

“Seen our guy?” Krev asks.

“No.”

To the left of the elevator shaft -- a locked door to the utility staircase. Krev leans over the card receiver -- a thick layer of dust. Krev looks right. The corridor is long: Sumar would’ve noticed the long-hair if his apartment was on the far end. So: either close to the lift or in the middle.

“Keep your blaster ready,” he tells Sumar.

Krev walks to the first door. Slouches -- people tend to get nervous when someone his size asks them questions. Puts his hand to the doorbell panel.

A tired-looking fat woman opens. Krev remembers his mother.

“Evening,” he says, “sorry to bother you, mam. But maybe you’d know where this long-haired guy lives?” He shows the length of the hair on himself. “I was behind him down there, you know, at the groceries. Saw he paid for the beer but left it there.” He shows her the six-pack. “I didn’t really notice myself until it was too late. A long-haired guy.”

“I don’t know anything,” the woman answers and shuts the door.

“What if she’s covering for him?” the Ubb asks. “Can be hiding him in her bathroom for all we know. Or may be calling him right now.”

“Calm down.”

Krev goes to the next door. To the next door. To the next door. To the next door. To the next-

“I thought it wasssss a woman firssst,” says an old one-armed Trandoshan. “Then I got a better look. Two-oh-eight, I think. He lives there.”

Krev and Sumar walk to the door of 208. Krev turns back: looks at the elevator. Either Sumar was slower than usual of the long-hair ran. Krev’d like to blame the first variant, but he’s got a bad feeling. He puts the six-pack down and unholsters his blaster.

“Go,” he tells Sumar.

Sumar shoots the lock panel. It sparkles. The door slides to the side.

For a thousandth of a second Krev muses he should’ve put his DY-225 into stun mode: he’ll need to shoot if the long-hair knew he was followed. But-

Too late. The 208 door is ajar. A dim room inside. A window opposite to the door. Neon light coming through the half-lifted blinds. AC hum. The instant supper sizzling.

A convertible chair between the door and the window. The long-hair stands behind it. Turning to the door. A rifle in his hands. Half a second -- and the muzzle will face Krev.

Krev Devin is faster. He shoots four blasts. One grazes the long-hair’s arm and hits the transparisteel behind him. The other three take the man in the chest. He drops behind the chair. His rifle -- on it. Krev can’t say if the long-hair managed to shoot. Then he exhales and realizes: no.

Sumar shouts: “What in the fuck!”

Krev enters the apartment. Smells of fried meat and burned flesh. Sumar enters next and closes the door. An open bathroom door at the left end of the room. Empty. To the left of it: a niche with hangers. Most vacant. A long countertop with a sink below the window. The long-hair -- Krev knows -- lies between the chair and it.

Sumar looks at the rifle. Swears. Goes to check the bathroom. Krev looks in the dead man’s face -- and also swears.

“Great.” Sumar pays him zero attention. “Know what this is? More trouble for the client. Know what that is? More trouble for us. Shit, Devin, what the fuck? Everything was going so smoothly.”

The reptilian walks to the corpse.

“Look at this asshole. Got himself a rifle, huh? What does a civilian need a fucking full-automatic for? You know...”

Krev swears. Sumar looks at him.

“What?”

“What? You don’t recognize him, do you?” Krev can’t look away from the face in the pulsing neon light.

“I don’t. You all humans look the same. Who is he?”

“Not a human, let me tell you that. It’s a clone.”

Sumar looks at the long-hair. “Nah. The hair’s all wrong.”

“Look at the face, not the hair. You don’t watch news? This fucking mug is everywhere.”

“You sure? Doesn’t look like a clone to me. The hair is... the face--”

“I’d recognize it anywhere. It’s because of these fuckers there ain’t any military jobs for normal people during a war.”

Sumar giggles. Perhaps he wants to remind Krev Krev’s been sitting ducks on Telos IV way before the clones were a thing. He knows better than that.

“Well, shit. I guess I can see that. Do you think it’s a setup? What if there’s a whole fucking squad of these bastards?”

Krev takes his time. The neon pulses in his eyes. The he says: “No. It’s a deserter.”

Sits down beside the body. Pulls on the hair.

“See? Grew himself some locks to be less noticeable. Worked on you, huh?”

“Shit, Devin... I get it. An ex-clone, ah, whatever the fuck, ex-marine can spill some serious beans. Shit!”

Sumar gets thinking. Walks to the countertop. Pinches off a piece of meat from the instant supper.

“Do you think,” he says, “they’ll believe us if we tell he was like this when we found him? I’m sure there were other people who wanted to shut him up. His war buddies... Maybe they burned half a planet from its orbit, you know, with all the kids and stuff. They don’t show that in the news. And now--”

“The neighbors saw us.”

“So what? We were looking for him. Questioned the neighbors. Makes sense. We’ll say those who wasted him had legged it before we got here--”

“Say what you want, just tell me what to say if they ask me. Better yet, make sure nobody does.”

“Devin, my friend, you got us into this mess, not me. Of course they’ll ask you.”

Krev thinks. Shakes his head: “Fuck that. We’ll tell it how it was: we entered, the artificial one started shooting. I wasted him.”

“Well, first of all, it’s not how it was. Second of all, it’s still a mess.”

“Unless we dig up something else.”

Krev digs. The comlink: recent calls -- all from unidentified numbers. Pockets of the two jackets in the niche. The insides of the chair: nothing. Holo-terminal. Search history: last cleared thirty hours ago. Since then: bookies, race results, porn, news, mail. Sumar rejoices: a message from today’s morning arranging a meeting in four days. “We shall talk about your contribution to the common cause.” The corpse’s clothes: the keycard to the apartment, a credit chip. A cache under the sink: an extra rifle clip, two CR-2s and an EM grenade. While Sumar drools over the findings, Krev goes to the bathroom. Another window there, blinds closed. Krev spreads two planks and looks out. Airspeeders flash by. Casino signs flicker. Krev sits down. Adrenalin vents from his system. Krev is afraid again.

He gets up and flushes. Opens the cistern. A terminal hard drive wrapped in film inside. Krev takes it out. Glances at the door. Puts the drive into his jacket, washes his hands, leaves.

“You done?” Sumar asks.

Krev nods.

He dons his gloves before leaving, takes the rifle and shoots the doorframe where the clone’s shot would’ve landed. The smell of burnt plastic fills the room. Krev puts the rifle down.

They leave the apartment. Nobody in the corridor. Krev picks up the six-pack and they ride down to the parking lot.

“I’m not sure we’re getting paid,” says Sumar when Krev drops him at his complex.

“Do your best,” says Krev and goes home.

At home, he opens a can of beer. Turns the stereo on. Good fifty-year-old jatz. Pauses for a moment. Then takes out a syringe and an ampul of glitterstim. Don’t face the truth alone, they say on Kessel.

Four archives on the hard drive. Encrypted, but shittily -- it even says “with a trial version”. Krev’s decipherer cracks them in under an hour.

  1. Contingency orders
  2. Geon. project
  3. Dangor Industries engineers
  4. My life



Krev Devin reads the names. The drug makes them glitter and sparkle like neon signs. The meaning of words hurries past him like a high-speed Coronet train.


	3. Vad Alnam II

_The Star of Onderon_ used to be a luxurious complex about thirty years ago -- well, middle-class-with-huge-ambitions luxurious. Things have changed since: it became apparent how the contractors saved credits. A junkie flew his swoop bike right into an apartment window while the family was having breakfast. Like many such towers, now _The Star_ is affordable to cops’ future ex-wives.

Alnam comes that very evening. Went to the precinct first to take a shower. A long shower. He knows he hasn’t done anything too bad, but Kram Midduk’s writhing face is in front of his eyes the whole time he’s driving.

But as soon as he leaves the speeder at _The Star_ parking lot (roofed and guarded, and be sure, future archeologist, costs extra), he forgets about Midduk -- though he knows he will remember him later. He feels gut-punched -- like always before something important and frightening: exams at the academy, or the work day after his father’s manifesto. Both times he had to shoot -- for real -- felt the same way aiming and pressing the trigger. The only time he had to check on a downed suspect. Before confessing to Ormi. And now, visiting his family.

Disengage. Don’t think about what you’ll be saying, or you’ll make it worse.

Alnam goes four levels up. Takes stairs instead of the elevator. Some extra minutes he doesn’t have to talk. He hates himself for this -- and for not thinking about it.

The stairwell door slides back in its place behind him. The thud makes Alnam jump up a little -- even though he knows about the damn door. The apartment -- the second door to the left opposite to the stairs. Alnam makes eight steps. Breathe calmer. He puts his hand on the panel. The tune beyond the door is some classic piece.

Ormi answers in half a minute. Her face shows up on the display above the panel. Alnam feels a pang of annoyance: he’s told her a thousand times not to turn the video feed on until she knows who’s calling. _The Star_ is a safe place -- relatively. Extra relatively for a woman and a child.

“Vad,” she says carefully. Why carefully?

“Hi, Ormi.”

She lets him in. He called her on the way to the precinct. For Ormi, the visit still counts as unexpected.

“How are you doing?” Alnam asks. Ormi nods absent-mindedly and starts saying something, but then Yalgi comes out of his room.

“Dad.” Not an emotion in his voice. But he says it as he rushes to embrace Alnam.

Alnam picks him, hugs him, spins him. His stomach doesn’t hurt anymore -- as if an invisible fist hasn’t been punching it for a few hours. What was he so afraid of? This is like getting to the surface when there’s no air left in your lungs, like drinking a gallon of cool water in the desert, like getting shot at and being missed! This is better: this is like seeing your son after not having seen him in almost two weeks. Haven’t even called -- stuck in the precinct all the time. Alnam gets angry at himself, but Yalgi is here, at his heart, and Alnam will call him tomorrow, he will, so everything is fine, no, scratch that, he’ll call him today when he gets home...

Two more spins, and Alnam puts Alnam down. Tousles his hair -- fair just like his father’s. Asks him: “How’re you doing, buddy?”

Yalgi’s been doing well. School might’ve got tedious, math might be going tough lately, and Mom might put on her strict face because of that, but Yalgi’s doing well -- how else can he be doing if his dad’s here, here unexpectedly, not even on a weekend? Yalgi takes Alnam to his room -- he’s got to show him his new drawings and his new holotapes and his new games and to sit next to his father and to play races with him and maybe his father will even give him his blaster pistol -- after unloading it and checking ten times over that it’s unloaded...

Ormi says looking at them that she’s got some work to do and she’ll be in her room. Alnam can hardly hear her. Yalgi’s room is what you’d expect a ten-year-old from a relatively safe Coruscant district to have. The bed’s undone, clothes piled on the floor -- Mom hasn’t been to his room today. The holo-terminal is barely visible under film-printed drawings. A holo-poster next to the entrance: Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi stand shoulder to shoulder, lightsabers in hands. They look at some enemies coming from outside the poster. The enemies are not shown, but that doesn’t matter as any ten-year-old boy from a relatively safe Coruscant district or any Republic planet knows. Whoever they’re facing, Anakin and Obi-Wan are going to win. There simply aren’t other options. Trillions of boys know the characteristics of their starfighters and their preferred styles of combat and even the names of their clone lieutenants, and the Jedi smile back to those trillions from their walls -- the heady and cocky but so charming Anakin and the composed, modest Obi-Wan. Trillions sleep well because they know: Skywalker and Kenobi are somewhere out there, in space, no matter where but somewhere their help is needed and they’ll save everybody even if all hell breaks loose.

Alnam smiles at Skywalker: you owe me one, pal.

He asks Yalgi about school and they sit down to play the racing game and Yalgi -- as it must seem to him -- naturally shifts the topic towards the Corellian hound pup his friend got for birthday and Alnam forgets the controls -- as always -- and Yalgi as always teaches him. They sit and talk and play the game and Ormi has to come twice to raise her voice at them -- it’s indeed late.

“Go take a shower and then it’s bed time,” she says the second time in the voice neither Alnam wants to argue with. “We’re getting up early tomorrow.”

Yalgi seems unconvinced by the argument, so Ormi adds: “Your dad also needs to get up early.”

Yalgi looks at Alnam, and Alnam nods -- although he’s got a comp day tomorrow.

While Yalgi is taking shower, Alnam and Ormi have some tea in the kitchen.

“How’s your work?”

“As well as it can be. It’s war, you know.” Ormi smiles and Alnam can almost see the old Ormi in this smile. “There isn’t much demand for art nowadays.”

“But that exposition you were organizing -- it’s still on the table, right?”

“It is, but in a different gallery. A smaller one, of course. The artists aren’t happy, but what can you do? It’s better than nothing, and some of my colleagues have it much worse. Like cancellations and all that.”

“You know,” he says, “they might accept me in the Domestic Security.”

Ormi tosses her head up. “Why are you telling me this?”

It angers Alnam. “Why indeed? I guess we didn’t live together for twelve years.”

“Vad--”

“Yeah, why would I tell you that? Why? It’s not like you’ve nagged at me for years that I was wasting my potential in the CorSec.” It’s not like you left because of it, he really wants to say. “And then my father with his politics... Then I didn’t have a chance, a single damned chance. Now I do. Now I do, and you ask me why I’m telling you?”

Ormi chews on her upper lip. Then she says, “Vad, I... I understand your frustration. I do. Please, believe me. But this changes nothing. I didn’t leave you because of what your father said. If I still owe you anything, it’s this fact. I didn’t leave you because of that.”

Alnam is not sure he believes her. He’s not sure if it makes it better or worse.

“I... I know you’re in pain,” she says softly. “I really do. But so am I. And I won’t allow this pain to touch Yalgi.”

“Good thing the divorce is not going to--” Alnam says and immediately regrets it. “No, I’m sorry. I... I don’t know how I let that slip. I would never blackmail you with our son. I’m sorry.”

Ormi opens her mouth. Yalgi leaves the bathroom, and she says nothing.

“Alright,” says Alnam as he gets up. “Time for you to go bed -- and for me too.”

“Come see us at the weekend,” says Ormi, and Alnam nods gratefully.

“Sure will. Okay, pilot, nose up -- it’s just three days. We could go to the cinema, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

“Then choose a movie. Right, and be careful around that pup. A Corellian is a serious dog. When I was in the academy, one cretin brought one into the campus. Well, that one was grown up, but still...” Alnam catches Ormi’s look and coughs. “Well. Your mother’s right, not the best story.” He leans to his son’s ear: “But I’ll still tell it to you one day.”

Yalgi laughs. The sound of it accompanies Alnam until his very home.

.

.

.

The money hits his account in two weeks -- six thousand credits. He has kept it in mind all the time that they were supposed to pay him, but when he checks the account and sees the sum, he stares at it for five minutes straight in disbelief.

Six thousand. Six thousand now isn’t what it used to be before the war, of course. It’s still good money, especially if it’s money for jam.

He jammed Midduk alright, he thinks. How do you like the thought your son’s college is going to be paid with the money that reeks of fear?

He doesn’t like it one bit. But his son will go to college, and Vad Alnam will pay for it -- not his father. He likes this thought.

Alnam taps “accept the transaction” almost with an easy heart.

.

.

.

They get in contact with him in another month when he is ready to admit Swauri’s promise was nothing. He’s made his peace with the notion. Let it be so. Let it -- if it means he doesn’t have to threaten any Krams Midduks anymore.

But they do get in contact. Swauri calls him into his office one day. A dark-skinned man in plain clothes sits on his table’s edge.

“Detective Alnam,” the captain says, “this is Agent Onoile Ven from the Republic Domestic Security.”

Onoile Ven offers Alnam his hand. Alnam shakes it.

“Glad to finally meet you, Detective,” Ven says. His handshake is firm and dry.

“Likewise,” says Alnam.

“You have given a good account of yourself. Captain Swauri,” Ven nods slightly to the side, “has recommended you. As we know, you have asked to be transferred to the RDS twice.”

This doesn’t sound like a question, but Onoile Ven falls silent waiting for Alnam’s reply.

“Yes, sir, and both times I was rejected on the grounds of--”

“On the grounds of the lack of experience in investigating large-scale cases. Total nonsense. The RDS is the agency that investigates large-scale cases. You were rejected--”

“Because I’m Vygo Alnam’s son.”

Ven furrows his brow. He doesn’t seem to like being interrupted.

“You are absolutely correct,” he says. “Droids handle the matters of the preliminary selection. It cuts some costs. But I can tell you, Detective: I know few people on the force who’d trust a droid with covering their asses, be it in field or in court. I don’t understand why we trust the droids with selecting those who have to do that covering. Being droids, they cannot fully consider all the information. For example,” Ven sticks his forefinger out, “they cannot take into account the fact that you haven’t been in contact with your father for many years. You are serving in the CorSec, after all, not running a daughter company.”

He gets off the table and steps towards Alnam.

“The Republic needs people like you, Detective. This need is more pressing now than ever before. I understand,” Ven smiles at the captain, “that the CorSec needs you as well -- not gonna argue with that. But it’s wartime. We need the best of the best in the RDS. Do you want to know why it is important?”

Alnam can imagine why, but Ven is clearly waiting for a yes answer.

“I do, sir.”

“The RDS works on large-scale cases, on, uh, state-scale cases, if you will. You can argue that there are other entities that also do that and you’ll be right: Senate special commissions, antiterrorism squads, military police... But there’s a big difference between them -- and us. The RDS reports only to the Supreme Chancellor.” Ven snaps his fingers unpleasantly loudly. “Maximum efficiency. No stalls, no bureaucracy. No funding issues -- you saw your paycheck. And I think your talents deserve to be put to use exactly in such an environment. What do you think, Detective?”

“I--”

“Think it over. Here’s my number. The sooner you call, the better,” Ven’s fingers flicker over the panel of his comlink. “Don’t hesitate to call me any time.”


	4. Krev Devin II

Night becomes day. Lights in Krev’s room go brighter. Daylight lamps, they are called.

It’s still dark behind the window. No days on Telos IV.

Krev doesn’t remember when he last saw daylight.

Krev chain-smokes. Krev drinks cafstim.

Glitterstim’s almost out of his system. The archive names pulse on the holoscreen as if Krev was still high.

Contingency orders.

My life.

Dangor Industries engineers.

Geon. project.

Krev smokes.

Contingency orders.

Krev smokes. Krev swears aloud.

Krev jumps from archive to archive. Again and again. They seem impenetrable. A monolith -- you can’t climb it. Somewhere -- he’s sure -- there must be the beginning. In one of the fucking archives. He’s sure of it.

Krev swears.

The intricacies of the Grand Republic Army’s subordination make his head yammer like a forgotten comlink. Krev has gotten it clear that if the Jedi generals are compromised, the command goes to the Chancellor. If the Chancellor can no longer perform his duties, the vice chair gets it -- until a new Chancellor is elected.

Krev can’t understand one thing: who commands the fucking thing right now?

Must be a hundred of orders. Krev thinks he always knew damn test-tubers couldn’t wipe their asses without instructions.

Krev smiles. He’s not really amused.

The deserter didn’t place the orders properly: number thirty-seven is put first.

Anything can happen in a war. Krev knows it. Krev’s seen transports full of refugees shot down from the skies by friendly fire. Didn’t really feel shit back then. Only later.

Now his fists clench. He tells himself it’s because of the drug though he knows it’s not.

No one told those boys from Atnakis to open fire. An error. A blunder. He’s seen them afterwards, those fucking artillerists. Two lived to see the war end -- out of the four. The other two had done themselves in.

Clones, they won’t do themselves in. They’ll execute the order no conscience involved. No matter what the order is. Mass arrests of civilians to make a wanted subject surrender? Will do. Execute one-tenth of the population until the subject complies every four standard hours? Aye aye, sir!

The main thing: who the fuck (thinks Krev while the two numbers, 3 and 7, pressure his brain like tumors) are they planning to force to surrender this way? CIS droids?

Answer: local militia leaders.

No other reason for the 37 to exist.

The struggle for powers and rights between Coruscant and planetary administrations is as old as the Republic itself. One side or the other gets the upper hand at times, but both know: any advantage has an expiry date. Both the metropole and the provinces catch the moment.

Or they used to.

With the GAR, the times are gonna change.

Krev glances at the entrance -- against his will. How long until another Krev Devin comes in to put three blasts in his chest?

Alright, he tells himself, calm down. No one knows you have the drive. If anyone even knows it exists.

Sumar? No, he hasn’t seen anything. And even if he has, he won’t tell. Or--

Krev reaches for the holo-terminal control panel. Delete all the fucking files, disintegrate the hard drive... maybe spend the payment for yesterday to get a new terminal.

He stops. And then he keeps on reading.

Engineers. The clone put them in a separate file for whatever reason. They didn’t work on the Geon. project, maybe? It doesn’t help in any case: there’s jackshit inside the Geon. project archive -- just two notes.

The first one: “About the project... these maniacs are actually going with it.”

The second one: “I don’t get it. Can somebody... can somebody explain it to me?”

Krev opens the Dangor Industries engineers archive for what must be the fiftieth time during the night-day. Just a butt of his cigarette is left -- he lights another one from it.

The damn clone must have used a speech-to-text program -- probably also a trial version. All the notes are hectic as hell. Krev’s eyes hurt, but he doesn’t run text-to-speech.

Walls here aren’t as thin as on Kessel, but Krev doesn’t take the risk. Risked yesterday.

The deserter, he finally realizes, was an engineer himself. A sentient could make a good life with such a profession -- on Kessel or elsewhere. But what can you ask of a clone? A dummy, a homunculus. Did he even understand what he was doing or were his skills instinctive?

He probably did. Wouldn’t have been a deserter otherwise.

Krev reads on. The clone he killed had served on Geonosis. Geon. project starts making a lick more sense. Got there after the first battle. Installed utility systems in the conquered hives. Point of interest: installed them for those Dangor Industries engineers.

Here’s where the kerfuffle begins. The engineers were sort of from Dangor Industries and sort of not. Krev rereads the paragraph -- at least the artificial bastard had the decency to divide his ramblings into paragraphs.

“We were told they were from Forak or something. But they weren’t from the Outer Rim. They told me, one of them, that they’d never been to the Outers before. Then they wore these uniforms. No insignia. But their briefcases... their toolboxes... they all had the Dangor Industries logo on them. And their droids. Their droids all had their brands restamped.”

Pain drones behind his eyes. Krev winces. What of it? Who cares if they were from Forak, Dangor, or whatever else? He’s hoped to see something as fucked up as the contingency orders.

He forces himself to finish the files. He doesn’t realize at first what he just saw.

But then it clicks. Even the dull headache retreats, coils somewhere in the back of his head.

This is why the engineers are so important:

“They were already there when we arrived at Geonosis.”

Krev rereads the sentence. And he rereads it once again.

The sense it makes goes nowhere. Doesn’t dissipate like when you repeat something many times.

“They were already there when we arrived at Geonosis.”

Krev rechecks it. My life: yep, the deserter was shipped to Geonosis after the first battle. Been through the second one in its entirety.

Geonosis remained under Separatist control when he arrived. That’s okay.

But what the hell were the Republic engineers doing there?

Krev moans. Krev massages his temples.

The fucking clone didn’t write shit. Understood everything as it was himself, Krev guesses.

Captives? Not a word on that. No: the engineers aren’t being evacuated. They stay on the planet. Doesn’t say why.

What if they weren’t with the Republic? Just an Outer Rim company buying discarded equipment from Dangor Industries? That happens: the rules prescribe that some son of a bitch must destroy used tools, but said son of a bitch is too enterprising to let it go, so he sells them. Happens a thousand times a day.

Wait. Look. It says: “They told me, one of them, that they’d never been to the Outers before.”

An Outer Rim company can afford hiring engineers from the better regions of the Galaxy. That’s sure not gonna be cheap: these are educated people with high living standards. No matter if they’re from the Mid Rim, the Inner Rim, or from the Core.

Such a company buying second-hand crap? From Dangor Industries, no less?

That doesn’t compute. When companies save on equipment, the cut costs end up transfiguring into the CEO’s space yacht, not into professionals to work with that equipment.

He queries the Holonet. Forak engineering. Forak construction.

There it is: Republic Tax Register. Forakk, a construction firm registered on Ryloth. Rigwork, network installation, habitable and inhabitable zone construction, etc. etc.

Special notes: last year, Forakk was exempted from taxes. Reason: funding from subsidies that fall within the heading of “The Outer Rim Development”.

Two grants: one from Ulmis Systems and the other from the Ordulann Conglomerate. Both companies registered in the Expansion Regions.

Not a word about Dangor Industries.

Not a word about Forakk itself in the news or anywhere else save for the tax register. Why the interest of respectable corporations like Ulmis and Ordulann? Money laundering?

He can’t ponder on that for long before his comlink starts buzzing. Sumar. Krev closes the archives as if Sumar can see them.

“What’s with my money?”

“That depends on whether you can keep your mouth shut. The administration woman’s calling, and she wants to speak with you as well.”

“So what is it: keep my mouth shut or speak to her?”

“She wants to know that you’re here on the line. So just hang on the line.”

Another incoming call. Secure channel. The voice on the other end is angry and anxious.

“So what happened there?”

“You see,” says Sumar, “the object had to be neutralized. As soon as we arrived, uh, the object resisted... resisted any of, uh, our attempts to, well, apprehend him. The thing is that, uh, the object actually used a weapon, and it was against us. Unfortunately, we had no other choice but to--”

“Do you have any idea what this means? Your sloppiness is bound to draw the attention of the public. In fact, it already is doing just that! I--”

Krev ad-libs. “My partner and I, we believe that the object had been notified of our arrival.” He almost hears Sumar’s inner swearing. “There’s no other explanation. He couldn’t have noticed us himself.”

The administration woman is silent for a long time. When she speaks again, her voice is uncertain.

“Can you be sure of that?”

“With all due respect, mam, I’ve been doing shadowing jobs for fifteen years. If I say he couldn’t have noticed us, he couldn’t.”

Sumar interjects him. “We do understand the gravity of the situation. But as my partner just said, there is a possibility of a third party being involved. In this light, I feel like I should remind you about what I wrote to you yesterday. I mean the meeting scheduled in three days between our, uh, object and his unspecified allies--”

“Don’t worry about it,” the administration woman says. “We are interested in keeping this as low-profile as possible. So you two lay low.”

“And our payment?” Sumar asks.

“You’ll be paid according to our agreement. Don’t worry about that.”

In Krev’s experience, this phrase is exactly when you get worried. So he asks: “When is that going to happen?”

His migraine has subsided.

“Today.”

She hangs up.

“So I should’ve kept my mouth shut?”

“Huh,” Sumar says. “I don’t really know. She got real worked up when you mentioned third parties.”

“Let her get as worked up as she likes -- as long as she pays us.”

“If there’s any trouble with her, we’re in deep shit, Krev. Without Madam Junior Representative, the Reps aren’t gonna hire us no more.”

“Then let’s hope all goes well for her. Not much else we can do.”

“Eh, I suppose. Alright. I’ll call you later.”

Krev looks at the blank terminal screen.

His comlink goes off again. A message. A hidden number -- but the same hidden number as the one the admin woman used.

“The meeting in 3 days come w/out Sumar.”

Krev jumps up. Krev starts pacing his room.

I’m not stupid enough to go, he thinks.

He comes to the window. Lights up another cigarette.

He knows he will go -- he already knows even though he hasn’t admitted it yet.


	5. Vad Alnam III

Ven didn’t lie when he told Alnam to call him anytime: it’s well past midnight when Alnam does.

The agent picks up after the first tone. “Detective?”

Alnam can’t tell by his voice if he woke Onoile Ven up.

“Good evening, sir,” he says. Lights of Uscru are flashing behind his speeder’s window: neon signs and police reds and blues. “I’m calling to tell you I have thought about your offer.”

Ven waits.

“And I would like to accept it, if it’s still up.”

“Very well. I’m glad to hear it, Alnam. I really am. I’ll send you all the paperwork: agreements, pacts, regulations. You’ll have to take a law exam. I’m sure it won’t be a problem. But I’ll send you an example of the test anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“When can you start working on your papers?”

“In a month or a month and a half. I should be able to finish my business in the CorSec by then. I could do it faster,” Alnam says for some reason, “but we just caught a large drug-dealing network, so--”

“Got it,” says Ven. “Don’t sweat over it. It’ll give you time to get acquainted with the regulations. Well, congratulations, Detective Alnam. Well done on your CorSec business -- and I hope, you’ll do equally well in the RDS.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Ven hangs up, and Alnam is left alone in his speeder. Police droids are still taking the detainees out of the clubs. The raid is huuuuge. Should you even quit this, Detective? No one’s going to trust a rookie with planning such ops in the RDS. And here, here everybody knows you. Everybody knows what kind of a man you are and what kind of a detective yo are. They know how you concluded from the brand on the ampules -- and as we know now, the brands were the real deal, factory write-offs -- and from the college boys’ reaction that it wasn’t ryll in said ampules but giggledust. They know how you made the suspects squeak and chased after search warrants for the past month until you got your hands on that spaceport cargo platform manager whose brother ran a cab service. And everybody will know how tonight you got those to whose clubs said cabs delivered the Ryloth dust.

Same as everybody knows who your father is and what he said.

Alnam takes off. Constables and droids will finish up here -- and he needs to write a report. That will take the rest of the night.

He’ll write his advance notice tomorrow.

.

.

.

They hold two parties at the precinct at the same time: one for Alnam’s promotion and the other for the pre-trial being done. They all know that the headache’s just starting with the transfer of proceedings. They all know the war will end sooner than the drug barons are found guilty.

Lately, they say that more often on Coruscant: the war will end sooner.

“Though we all regret that such a specialist as Alnam is no longer with us,” Captain Swauri says, a glass of Kattadan wine in hand, “we must also remember that he is a real special asshole. So we’re not just getting rid of him today, but also pissing in the RDS cornflakes by doing so.”

He waits for the laughter to cease.

“But in all seriousness, we are glad to see you move up in life, Vad. Not just because we won’t have to see again, though that’s also a factor. We in the CorSec like when our boys and gals show everyone what they’re really worth. Am I right, lads?”

The lads give a hurrah. They aren’t very enthusiastic, Alnam hears. He knows they aren’t. Who of them wants to be seen hurrahing Vygo Alnam’s son? The windows are large in the conference room. Who can tell if they are not being filmed from a speeder outside? It’s one thing to work with an Alnam and another to drink with him.

Swauri wants to call him a cab, but Alnam refuses. He’s only had two glasses -- that falls within the driving regulations.

Onoile Ven is waiting for him outside -- leans on the fender of a speeder with his hips.

“Evening, Detective Alnam. Need a ride?”

“My speeder is parked right there.”

“You can pick it up tomorrow. When is your exam?”

“Almost in a week.”

Ven nods. “That’s enough time. Get in.”

Coruscant sweeps under them. Ven is silent. He’s watching the corridor. Alnam also says nothing until they get stuck at a red light.

“Did you have to wait long for me? You should’ve come in.”

“It was your celebration,” Ven smiles. “And I’m not sure your colleagues -- former colleagues -- would like to see me.”

The speeder is on the move again, but this time, the agent doesn’t keep silence.

“I’ve read your reports on your last operation. Well done, Alnam. But I have to ask you something: will you be able to plan and conduct raids on sentients involved in anti-Republic activities as brilliantly? Drugs are an evil. An easy-to-recognize evil. Even those who sell them understand they’re villains. They may go to great lengths to justify that to themselves, but deep down, they understand. But the agitprop, saboteurs, spies -- they don’t think they’re villains. No, in their minds, they are heroes. Heroes of justice. Heroes of freedom. They are convinced they are. They try to convince the others, including us. That’s why it’s imperative that you understand what they are in reality. Can you handle that?”

Alnam doesn’t answer at once. “Should I think of this question as a psychological test, sir?”

“You can think that way. But this is no test. The droids in HR won’t know what you answer to it.”

Why couldn’t they ask him before he left the CorSec?

Alnam fidgets in his seat. “Sir, I performed a sensitive task for you, didn’t I?”

“You did. But that was just a trial. You didn’t have to fight your principles to get it done. I cannot promise you that you won’t have to fight them later. This is why I’m asking you what I’m asking you.”

You know nothing about what I had to fight, mister agent, Alnam wants to say.

He keeps his mouth shut. Doesn’t bring Ven’s persistent attentiveness up.

“Indeed, I haven’t yet worked on political cases and thus cannot base my answer on practical experience. However, I am more than sure of my abilities and my convictions. I am a patriot of the Republic.”

Is he really? Probably is. He’d have joined his father if he wasn’t, wouldn’t he?

This thought doesn’t convince Alnam now as it hasn’t ever before. He has thought about it much in the past two years and he still can’t tell if his father’s act was an act of true patriotism.

Onoile Ven doesn’t persist further, though. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Thank you, Alnam.”

Their speeder gets stuck in another jam when Alnam speaks up again. “Sir, can I ask you something as well?”

“Shoot.”

“That job I did... was it really that important for the Republic? I have to admit, I didn’t find it to be that way.”

Ven smiles. “Don’t worry, Alnam: not all work we do in the RDS is like that. But it was important. I get what you think about it. I’m not crazy about the Jedi myself. Trained generals, not monks, should command armies. But we do as the Senate says.”

Think: what does he mean by this? That he has to accept the Jedi as the GAR commanders? Or that the RDS carries out all the Senate’s orders?

“We can’t give our enemies any latitude now. No rumors disparaging senators -- even if the senators themselves do their utmost to generate such rumors.” Ven falls silent for a second. Then he adds, “There’s a silver lining, though. This doesn’t concern the Supreme Chancellor. Maybe you think the press and the Holonet in general paint him in too good a light. It’s not so. He’s exactly like they represent him.”

“So we are in good hands?” Alnam realizes he just put his foot in his mouth, so he says in a hurry, “I’m sorry.”

“No, why?” Ven gets perplexed for some reason. “You’re going to be in the RDS, but it doesn’t mean you can’t criticize the authority here. You can say what you want. It’s not prohibited.”

Unless, of course, you want to say something of Vygo Alnam-magnitude.

“But really, many of us don’t like when somebody speaks ill of the Chancellor. Just a piece of advice. But you’ll get it once you meet him.”

.

.

.

He passes all the tests. Turns in his general jurisprudence blank thirty minutes before the deadline. Administration of law -- forty minutes early. He gets the highest grades on both. Things get harder on the shooting range, but his results still fall within the requirement.

But he understands he passed the real test a couple of months ago. Plus maybe the question Ven asked him in his speeder.

Are you laughing now, Alnam? You should cry instead. Your abilities didn’t earn you this position in the RDS. What do you figure your first task is going to be? Maybe fly to Sanner? Prodigal father reunites with his son -- how’s that for a headline?

Alternative theory: the RDS needs Alnam for different kinds of headlines. To show the populace the Republic doesn’t turn away even from the children of untrustworthy elements.

Both theories disgust him, but Alnam knows he’ll suck it up. For Yalgi’s future -- he will.

.

.

.

“Vad Alnam,” says Ven, “meet Mtoro Apani. She will be your mentor.”

Alnam shakes the Ithorian’s hand.

“She will give you a rundown on our current state of affairs. You have my number if you have any questions to me specifically.”

Onoile Ven’s hologram disappears from the relay, and Alnam stays face-to-face with his mentor.

“Nice to meet you,” Mtoro says in Basic. She speaks with both her mouths, and it sounds as if two persons are talking to Alnam. “I am sure we will work well together. I’ve seen your CorSec clearance rate. Very impressive.”

“Thank you. I’m sure we’ll make a good team, too.”

The Ithorian sits down at her holochips-covered desk. “I think it won’t take long until you learn the ropes. You’ll get it as we go. We have some business tomorrow in the Senate, so there’s your opportunity to dive into that atmosphere.”

“Is it the Special Commission business?”

Mtoro gives out a loud reverberating croak. Alnam hasn’t communicated with Ithorians that much before, but he knows this sound serves as a shrug.

“Everything in our work is related to the Commission one way or another. But tomorrow, it’s not a session we need to attend. We have to meet a senator.”

.

.

.

People say that Senator Narlaut Dibasi could’ve become the Supreme Chancellor if not for the war. He’s super popular not only on his home planet of Sethri but also throughout the Mid Rim. Alnam remembers how five years ago he took his family -- it was back when all was good -- to Glee Anselm for a vacation. The senator’s portraits hung in the hotel’s lobby and on almost every little shop’s wall. “Without Dibasi,” an old Nautolan inner tubes seller told him then, “the Hutts would’ve been here.”

Vygo Alnam also had much to say about the Sethrian senator. “On Sethri,” he would say, “the Zabrak make for more than a half of population. Now how many, do you figure, Zabrak candidates reach the final tour of Senatorial elections?” Then he would connect his thumb with his forefinger. “And not a soul more! As a rule, not one more. Hard to elect a Zabrak when half of them are in jail, I suppose. Add to that how the constituencies are divided. And add money! Always add money! Who on Sethri if not Dibasi can afford Holonet ads in prime time? Who if not Dibasi can afford all the bribes?”

Now Narlaut Dibasi, a fifty-year-old Human with a retreating forehead, a dark-grey crew cut, and bulging eyes of a mad prophet sits in his Senatorial office. Behind him is a window with a view on the Avenue of the Core Founders. It’s raining -- Coruscant has been skimping on nice weather lately.

The senator finally turns the hologram off and looks up at Mtoro and Alnam. “Ah, Agent Apani. Thank you for coming! You arrived at my call,” he smiles.

Alnam remembers another thing his father used to say about Dibasi: “Smiles and nothing else, that’s what he’s going to give you. Vote for him if you want another Palpatine.”

“And this would be...” Dibasi offers Alnam his hand but looks at Mtoro all the while.

“This is Agent Vad Alnam, my partner.”

The senator’s smile withers a bit -- but he doesn’t take his hand away.

He has them sat on a soft leather sofa. A droid brings them refreshments while Dibasi tunes his holoprojector.

“My friends,” the senator says, “less than two weeks divides us from the stated meeting of the Special Commission on Investigation of Anti-Republic Activities. As its head, I will have to provide a report. Thanks to your efforts, our successes are more than considerable. We are on the right pass, my friends. But! We cannot put our minds at ease before the time for that comes. Am I right? We should put vigilance first. Just as you, I keep my eyes open for everything that concern propaganda. And this is what my searchlights caught.”

He pushes a few buttons on the holoprojector, and a hologram of an avian sentient in a long robe appears.

“This is Senator Ktii from Skados VI,” Dibasi introduces her. Ktii squawks her greetings. “She informed me -- as her friend from the Mid Rim as well as the head of the Special Commission -- about several disturbing facts. Very disturbing, to be more precise. These facts, agents, take place in the very heart of Skados VI.”

“As far as I remember, not a small part of the GAR’s ammunition is produced on Skados VI,” says Alnam.

“You are absolutely correct. And it is specifically at the factories where honest citizens of the Republic forge our victory that these vile cases of pro-Separatist rabble-rousing occur. It happens during the hardest time, the hardest ordeal our Republic has faced in a thousand years!”

“With all due respect, Senator,” says Mtoro, “such cases are -- unfortunately -- hardly rare at any factory in the Republic. This is more of a case for the planetary security force rather than--”

“Of course, I wouldn’t have called you because of such a trifle,” Dibasi waves his hand. “However, there’s something far more sinister behind the propaganda on Skados VI than a disgruntled worker or a paid union leader. No, I firmly believe that this is exactly the case for the RDS. These so-called activists employ the help of a celebrity -- how did you put it, Senator? -- right, of a culturally important personality. One Isk Povo Rapol. The Skados VI Cattesians adore the bastard. His entire image is built around him being just a man of the people, just like any factory worker. He sings about things they care about. Of course, he gets more per concert than this simple worker gets in six months and he gets it off the worker and his friends, but they don’t care enough to notice it. He’s got property on Coruscant and he’s got the balls to tell his fans what’s best for Skados VI. You see now? The RDS involvement is necessary.”

Alnam glances at Mtoro. She’s silent. She doesn’t seem that convinced by Dibasi’s arguments.

“Senator Ktii told me that Povo Rapol appears in a holotransmission aired every Zhellday at twenty-two hundred hours.” Dibasi actually says twenty-two hundred hours, the prick. “It’s being transmitted from somewhere on the planet. I’m giving you all the information she’s given to me. And agents -- this matter should best be settled until the next meeting.”

Alnam and Mtoro get up when the senator adds, “No time to lose, huh? You need to find the enemy elements, and I...” He smiles as if to himself. “I need to prepare my commentary on the Republic reorganization project. Yes, my friends, this is huge. Huge... The orders come from the man himself,” Dibasi points up. “Sate Pestage! Well, I can’t divulge all the juicy bits -- no matter how much I want to.”

In the atrium, Mtoro tells Alnam: “Dibasi is one of the brighter ones on the Commission.”

.

.

.

That evening, he really wants to talk to someone. Needs to.

“Going through too many emotions today?” he asks his reflection, but the need goes nowhere.

Alnam peers into the contact list of his comlink. He could call Ormi once -- even after they’d separated. He knew he’d find support there. Not anymore.

Friends. Do you still have any, Alnam? Have you ever had any? Vygo’s manifesto seems to have put an answer in the head of that question.

His finger hovers over his father’s number. For a loooooooong time. They haven’t spoken in almost a year. Now you want to call him? What’s there to say? “Hi, Dad, you can congratulate me: I’m with the RDS now?”

But he knows his father likely has heard of it. Vygo Alnam still has friends everywhere. If you got money, friends will come.

Still he sits for a while looking at the numbers and letters of his father’s number. Scrolls the address list past it a few times -- and scrolls back up to it a few.

And in the end, he doesn’t call.


	6. Krev Devin III

The establishment: _The Lonely Herder Bar._ The fifteenth floor of Aul Sebbata’s Tower in Coruscant City. Round-the clock live music. Sabacc tables. Don’t be so lonely, herder.

Back of Krev’s head itches as he walks in.

The Iktotchi bouncer eyes him something vile. Young. Wants to fight. Krev looks at him as if in a mirror that shows him a ten years younger Krev.

A shit bar. Local Republic functionaries dine here. The sterile white lights everywhere -- no shadows -- must remind them of home. Krev doesn’t remember ever seeing such a shit bar on proper Coruscant.

It’s dark behind the window encircling the tower. Windows on Telos IV are a mockery.

The back of his head itches so badly he almost scratches it.

That’s where they’re gonna shoot you.

Not many people. On the stage, a skinny Twi’lek warms himself up at the drum set. A middle-aged Human screams at the Sabacc dealer.

The suit he’s wearing gives away a non-native: too expensive. Krev remembers the clone in his shitty jacket.

Great speeder, though.

He takes a table as far from the elevator as possible. With his back to the window, he feels a little calmer. A little.

He waits.

He thinks he’s got it all figured out. Keyword: thinks. There is the burning star-chaos of things like contingency orders under the thin pretense of normalcy.

But he thinks he’s got it all figured out.

The woman appears maybe half an hour after him. Alone -- like a herder. Krev has seen her on the news -- she’s the junior representative of the Republic.

She must know what he looks like: she goes straight towards him. That’s some bad mojo. Krev doesn’t like it.

The leather chair rustles and hisses under her weight. Krev tries to watch her -- and the rest of the room. If they’re going to whack you, sure as hell it’s not gonna be her.

“Mister Devin,” she says putting a cigarette in her mouth.

Krev chuckles: he didn’t expect a Republic representative to smoke.

A click of the lighter. Krev watches the fire reflect in her eyes.

“That’d be me,” he says. He doesn’t like how his voice sounds: weak. Scared.

For a minute or two, the rep smokes, avoiding Krev’s eyes.

Krev waits.

“Does your partner know you are here?”

“Sumar? He doesn’t.”

“Good.”

“And he won’t, provided that I return home safely tonight and cancel the message scheduled to be sent to him. To a few news agencies, too.”

Something flashes in the woman’s eyes. Worry? Or just the light of her cigarette?

“Such precautions are unnecessary, I assure you.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

Now she looks at him alright. Studies him.

Krev returns the favor.

On Kessel, women like her were all low-rank officials. Dorm heads. Safety supervisors. That kind of thing. All looked the same whatever species they belonged to. Had the same constantly anxious look at their same faces.

Okay. Krev knows how to deal with them.

“So,” he says, “why did you want to meet me here?”

“Because this is where I was supposed to meet with Brate.”

“That thing’s got a name? How charming.”

“He was a sentient just as you and me, Mister Devin.”

“Well, I’ll keep my reservations about that.”

The rep doesn’t pussyfoot, though. Krev can’t help but like it.

“We both know,” she says, “that there was no third party.”

“You told your... friend about us, didn’t you?”

“I never thought it would turn out like it did.”

“Things tend to turn out this way with me.”

She inhales -- half smoke, half unsaid words. “You are both men of violence. Yes... I should have known that. But I knew. I knew it, Mister Devin. But that was the only way to get you two together. So I thought. And look where it got me...”

Krev thinks. She’s harder to read than he anticipated. But she sympathizes with the tuber -- he can tell that. Were they fucking? They could have been. Bad if so: never underestimate the power of love or whatever people take for it.

“So why did you tell him?” he presses on. “To give him a chance? Your higher-ups wanted him...” Wait. Not killed -- had the rep not told him, the clone could’ve lived. “Captured? And you didn’t?”

She drives her cigarette into the ashtray. Krev watches the little bits of tobacco fall all over.

Finally, the woman says, “I told you why already.” She looks him in the eye. Krev genuinely doesn’t understand. She deigns to explain. “To get you two together. That was the plan.”

“Well, didn’t it work wonders,” Krev mutters. He finds himself not in a mood for jokes, though. His brain tries to get it. Tries to reverse-engineer it. It fails. Too much drugs lately, old Krev. Too much drugs and too many contingency orders.

“I messed up,” Madam Junior Representative says quickly. Then she repeats herself. It doesn’t sound like she’s making an excuse. It doesn’t sound like she is trying to convince him.

Krev doesn’t know what to think.

Seems to become a trend.

“You were supposed to talk. I thought Brate would trust me. I told him you were there to talk. But he didn’t believe me. I cannot blame him, you know.” She lights up another cigarette. “After what he’s been through... Not surprising he had trust issues. Tell me, Mister Devin, did he really try to shoot you?”

Krev’s face doesn’t betray anything. Seldom does. “It was either him or me, ma’am.”

She purses her lips -- as if to say something or to spit in Krev’s face. Does neither.

All the while, Krev thinks. It is a straight road to a stroke, he knows, he can feel the blood vessels in his head creak from exhaustion, his brain isn’t suited for this anymore, but he thinks.

“Your bosses didn’t okay your call to the... Brate?”

She raises her eyes. “My bosses, Mister Devin, didn’t know about him at all.”

Now that’s a big reveal. Krev can name one or thirty-seven bigger ones, but this one’s still huge.

“It’s hard to lose a clone deserter, I imagine.”

“The Republic is vast. It can change, but for now, it remains vast. They didn’t know about him.”

“And the body?”

“I took care of it. I had to pull a few strings, but I took care of it.”

Think. What is this woman about? Is she a Sep agent? Krev’s forehead perspires. He hasn’t done glitter in two days. He could use a tad now.

She’s said some Sep things, to be sure. But a Separatist herself?

What could they need? To extract the clone. Engineer. Makes sense: he knows about the communication lines on Geonosis. They planning a third battle now?

Nah. Krev doesn’t buy it. The Republic is fubar enough to let a Sep slip in their ranks. But the Seps wouldn’t have fucked it up so badly. Must’ve been the junior rep’s personal initiative.

Back to the fucking theory.

“So let me guess,” he says, “you two little lovebirds wanted to elope together. The best way you could think of was hiring me. That was dumb: I’m not a smuggler. Sumar ain’t one, either.”

The woman is silent. Krev’s eyes tingle when he tries to read hers.

“I don’t know what you want from me now. To kill me? Go ahead.”

Pity he’s not carrying a blaster: none allowed in _The Lonely Herder._ Even got a detector frame and everything. If he had a pistol, he’d put in on the table right in front of her: shoot if you dare. Tougher nuts than this little bleeding heart have shitted themselves when Krev offered them a gun to kill him.

“Do I look like a killer to you? Or do you see yourself in everybody else?” Her voice is shaking. She looks out the window. “No, you can still be useful to us.”

Us?

“You’d better comply, Mister Devin.” On the stage, the drummer gets on gigging, and the junior representative has to say that again. “If you don’t, they’ll bury both of us. They know where the body is and they will use it.”

Well, shit. Should’ve killed yourself, Devin. Should’ve spared yourself from all this.

“Who’s they?”

“My employer has people everywhere. In the administration. In the casinos. In the spaceports. Everywhere.”

Krev really, really doesn’t like the sound of it. So she’s a Sep after all?

At this point, he’d prefer getting one in the back of his head.

“Whom do you work for and what does he need me for?”

The woman blinks. “He will tell you himself.”

She drives a Koro-2. A slick choice for a junior rep. When they leave the parking lot behind and the lights of Coruscant City brighten the cockpit, Krev notices a small hologram on the dashboard. Madam JR and a girl of five or six. Krev glances at the Madam JR.

“I don’t know what you got yourself into,” he says, “but it ain’t good for you. What is the little junior representative here gonna say when her mommy ends up buried together with Krev Devin?”

The woman turns the hologram off angrily.

Krev snickers.

“Be more considerate about your words when you’re talking to my employer.”

Who the hell is that employer?

“He’s got a temper, huh?”

But she doesn’t answer.

Coruscant City flows back. Krev tries to make out what district they’re in. They go past the Dadarru spaceport -- unused for two years. Krev’s feeling well for some reason. He’s feeling adventurous. If there’s an oncoming speeder in the next fifteen seconds, he thinks, then I’m gonna make it out alive. He counts. Poses: makes pauses shorter. A cargo van changes lanes and roars past the Koro-2. Eight seconds. Krev starts smiling. Krev feels as though he’s already out. Make it three speeders in twenty seconds. If there are three speeders, he’s certainly going to make it. The first one: four seconds. The second: fourteen. The third one doesn’t show up. Krev’s still smiling.

They fly through a long tube in the side of some ancient factory building. Krev sees rubble and speeder frames littering the floor. The tube leads them into a large circular room with loading cranes rearing their necks like skeletons of some extinct beasts. Past it. The next room is force-fielded away.

Krev looks around. This must have been a maintenance room back when the factory was still up. He sees docking nests for repair droids -- all long marauded.

The woman leads him to a stairwell. It is lit up, and Krev can hear the hum of a generator somewhere behind the walls.

They go down. Careful: noise above them. Somebody trying to fall into step with them. Somebody failing. Somebody large.

“Come out,” Krev stops to say. “I know you’re there.”

The rep doesn’t look perturbed.

A figure appears one stair flight above them. Devaronian. Bulkier than Krev. Blaster in hand.

“This one’s a better hearer than thinker, Fadi,” he grins.

“Care to say that to me without a pistol?”

“Can you please not--” the woman starts, but the Devaronian holsters his blaster.

“Why, I do. That and a few other things.”

Krev thinks. Now that’s the thinking his brain’s used to. The fucker is large. Horns reinforced with metal rings. Has the high ground. But: wears a long, heavy duster. Can’t reach for his pistol easily. Got twitchy fingers: his fists snap closed and shoot open again every second. Not a fighter. Relies on his looks.

Krev steps one stair down. Left foot, so the right one’s ready to kick off the upper stair.

The Devaronian takes a step forward. A step down. Leaves his left knee exposed. Shit. Too damn high: two stairs lower, and Krev could break the fucker’s leg in one kick.

“Gonna run any farther?” the fucker asks.

Krev thinks. The staircase is too narrow to get behind him. Think: the duster. Good leverage. Secure the fucker’s right hand so that there’s no grabbing the blaster.

He leaps when the fucker makes another step. They collide. It’s like hitting a duracrete wall: Krev has to latch on the fucker’s duster not to get thrown back. Then a punch in the chest throws him back all the same.

Gasping, he struggles to regain control of his limbs. Thinks he hears the woman yelling. Left arm is a go. Left leg is a go. Right leg, too. It’s the right arm that’s not a go by a fucking parsec.

Air escapes him -- again -- when the fucker presses on his back.

“I think I’m gonna break this little fucking arm of yours,” he hears. “Just to teach you a lesson. Besides, it’s not like you need two hands for anything anyway.”

Krev hears the bones crunching. Worse: he feels the crunching, too. He grinds his teeth not to scream. His left hand tries to find a fold of the duster -- anything.

“Sorval,” the woman says, “that’s enough! Let him go.”

An eternity passes before the fucker obeys.

Krev drags his right arm from behind his back. It feels numb and on fire at the same time. He rolls over to his back. Sends impulses to his right hand. The ghosts of fingers move in the dim light of the stairwell.

“It’s this attitude that got us into the current mess,” Madam Junior Rep says. “What’s wrong with both of you?! The boss isn’t going to be happy.”

“He’s not happy as it is,” the fucker says.

“Look,” the Republic lady stares in Krev’s face as he leans against the wall, “it’s going to look as if we kidnapped him off the street!”

“That was a better solution that letting everybody see you two together. I should’ve done it myself.”

“Oh, you’ve done a lot of things already. None of them were beneficial to the cause.”

“Stop it, Fadrina. You know I am loyal to it.”

“I do. But stop acting so foolishly if you don’t want to flush it down the toilet!”

The fucker grumbles. Now Krev sees how surefooted he is. His fists don’t twitch anymore. He is a fighter after all, and he managed to fool Krev.

Not bad, demonman, he thinks. Until next time.

“Can you talk?” the woman asks him.

Krev spits. Almost no blood -- a good sign. “Sure.”

“Okay then. It’s time for you to meet our employer.”

They lead him down two more flights and then into a storage room. It’s crammed with lidless empty containers and crates. There seems to be a system to how they are located. Maybe the demonman makes his lair here, Krev thinks.

He doesn’t notice a holo-transmitter until Fadrina the junior representative starts it up. It takes a minute or two for a hologram of a tall man to appear.

“Leave us,” the man says. He is well past his prime. His long face sits in a cloud of a rather shaggy white beard.

“But--” the fucker starts.

“Did I not make myself clear? Leave us.”

Fadrina and the fucker exit the warehouse.

Krev eyes the man in the hologram.

“Do you know who I am?” the man asks.

“I do.” He has to bite his tongue not to add: sir.

“Good.” Vygo Alnam runs his hand through his hair. “I know who you are as well, Mister Devin. And I know what you did to my ally.”

“Do you also know how your ally greeted me?”

Krev can’t think straight. That’s one reveal too many for today.

“You were hired to get in contact with Brate, not to murder him.”

“You should really address this to your Republic woman.” Krev looks back but sees only the door. “It was her plan to keep me in the dark. I was told to apprehend that... that ally. I was acting as best I could in the then-current situation.”

Now his heart’s galloping inside his ribcage. He tries to tell himself they would’ve killed him long ago if that was Alnam’s intention. It doesn’t work.

“The idea was to introduce you to the information he had in an unsuspicious way. Now we have a dead body on our hands.”

“And if I didn’t shoot, you’d still have one. Mine.”

Alnam takes his stare off Krev. Think! The old man’s thinking, so think as well.

“I know that you do not like the Republic, Mister Devin.”

“I don’t. Only nobody listens to me when I say that.”

“What I... what we are trying to achieve is to dismantle the deeply corrupt system. To grant people their rights.”

“Are you with the Separatists?”

Vygo Alnam furrows his brow. “They are no better. Violent thugs who have overrun the initially benign movement. They are not going to change anything to the better. No, my cause is different. I want to end the war and to have the people responsible for it convicted. I, Mister Devin, hold the entire establishment guilty. Guilty as sin! The Senate, the Separatist Council, the Jedi -- all of them.”

“Alright,” says Krev. “But with all due respect, I don’t see your army anywhere. How do you plan to beat both sides without one?”

“One doesn’t need an army to contend in this war. It will be won by intelligence, not by brute force. The one clone I had was more valuable and powerful than the entire Grand Army.”

Krev says nothing. He’s very afraid. Didn’t think he’d be when the time comes.

Yet, he looks Alnam in the eye. Owes himself that, at least.

“That clone, Brate, was my key to victory. My key to winning the public opinion. You killed him, but it is impossible to kill information. Tell me, Mister Devin: have you found a hard drive on him?”

This is it, Krev’s lizard brain tells him. This is the big choice. Not of this evening -- of your life.

“I have,” he says. “And naturally, I have destroyed it.”

Vygo Alnam’s eyes start bulging as if he got thrown out of an airlock.

“You--”

“After I copied its contents to a terminal in one of the Holonet cafes here on Telos. Or was it a hotel? I can’t remember. All encrypted, of course. And not with a trial version.” Alnam doesn’t seem to understand this one, so Krev moves on. “You need this information? Fine. Let’s work together. Like you said, I’m no Republic lover. If what you have in mind is going to make life better for planets like Kessel, I’m in. Hell, if it’s going to put a burning stick up the Republic’s ass, I’m in.”

Krev thanks the nature and his parents for how little emotion his face shows. Hard drive destruction: he’s done no such thing. The damn drive lies in a little secret compartment in his flat. But Krev really, really wants to walk out of this fucking factory.

“What I wanted to hire you for,” says Alnam, “was to provide security and access to some underground data-spreading channels. I picked you because I needed a man of convictions. You seemed to be the best option. And now you seem to be the only option I have.”

“And you sent your engineer to Telos to make him meet me?”

“It’s an easy planet to get lost on. Everything looked like a perfect starting position.”

“Why not use your own connections to spread information?”

Alnam pinches his nose bridge. “It cannot be seen coming from me. All the Republic news sources have been working hard for the past two years to discredit me. I needed somebody unaffiliated to run this campaign. Had all gone well, you wouldn’t have learned about my involvement at all. I wanted everything to transpire in a natural manner. Ah, my old mistake. Things never do transpire naturally unless you meddle in them. This is a lesson I should have learned forty years ago, but some lessons we are particularly unperceptive towards.” He pauses before saying, “What did you learn from Brate’s recordings?”

Krev wonders how much Alnam knows about them. Decides to spice his tale up with some truth: “There is this construction company, Forakk. It’s apparently being financed by two Expansion firms--”

“Leave that trail. It’s irrelevant. Focus on important things. The public must learn those.”

“Like contingency orders?”

“Who cares about contingency orders? They’re an open secret anyway. No, focus on ConCare.”

“What’s that?”

“You haven’t seen it in the files?”

“No, but you apparently have, so why don’t you just tell me what that is?”

“I have not seen anything in the files because I haven’t seen the files themselves. However, I have spoken to Brate and heard this name from him. This is also a name that has appeared more than once in my own investigation.”

“Alright. So what you got on this ConCare?”

Alnam sighs. “I’d rather you form your own opinion and come to your own conclusion. Then, we can compare our findings.”

“You kept me in the dark once, and look where it got us. Maybe let’s dispense with all this need-to-know nonsense?”

“No information should come from me -- no facts, at least. You see, I don’t believe in such a thing as trust. Do not trust me, Mister Devin, and do not trust anyone else. Do your own research and once -- or if -- you arrive at the same conclusion as I have, we will join our databases to get the full picture.”

That’s why you’re telling me what to look into and what not.

“Okay, ConCare. Got it. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Alnam nods, “there is something. Based on my sources, I don’t think you will betray me. However, I should mention that my involvement in this affair being disclosed would lead not only to the public distrusting everything you say, but also to my political capital -- or what’s left of it -- dwindling at a more rapid rate than usual. And my political capital, Mister Devin, holds many things together in this Galaxy. For example, it holds together the jaws of several law officers from Telos IV who know who you are and what you did on Manaan.”


	7. Vad Alnam IV

The RDS flies first-class. Drinks and spa included. Alnam doesn’t drink much but indulges in taking mud baths.

Destination: Skados VI. ETA: four days after leaving Coruscant.

“How does Dibasi expect us to be done with the case in two weeks if the trip alone takes so long?” Alnam asks Mtoro the evening before they exit the hyperspace.

“The senator can expect anything he’d like,” the Ithorian says. She hasn’t been drinking at all -- one of the reasons for Alnam’s own abstinence. “Our goal is not to produce a beautiful and timely report, Vad. We are here on a mission to save the Republic.”

It’s hard registering sarcasm when you hear two voices at once, but Alnam manages. “Not crazy about the whole shebang, Agent Apani?”

“I can’t say I am. There’s no telling how long we’re going to spend on Skados. I’m going to miss a lot of important events back in the capital. The Coruscant Opera will be playing _The Brief Reign_ recast this fall, and I can’t wait to see Treblanc’s rendition of _The Horror in the Orphanage..._ ”

Alnam almost tells her about the exhibits his wife organizes. Cuts himself off. He doesn’t have a wife anymore.

“Also not seeing my family for who knows how long...” Mtoro continues.

“Also having to train a rookie...”

“That too. But at least, it’s going to be nice to get off the urban nightmare for a while.”

“And go to an industrial one? Sorry to disappoint, but we aren’t going to see much of Skados VI’s beautiful nature. We’re investigating workers, not wild animals.”

Mtoro sighs. “What is there to investigate about the workers? They’re angry because they’re underpaid. It’s hardly a political stance.”

Alnam stretches his legs on the deckchair. “Demanding higher wages isn’t. But they want to secede from the Republic. Don’t you think that is a political stance?”

The Ithorian looks at him attentively, and Alnam thinks she is going to bring his father up.

She doesn’t.

“They might be goaded into taking it,” she says. “Sometimes, a single person is all it takes to rouse the masses.”

“Isn’t this what we are investigating?” Alnam asks. He doesn’t really care one way or another, but keeps asking. Needs to build his image. Mtoro probably isn’t the best partner to do it with, but she still talks to the others. Let her talk. Let her tell what a hardliner asshole Vad Alnam is. If you’re committed to the RDS, commit fully.

“I suppose. But this is something a diplomatic mission should be tasked with, not us. We need to find out the reason why these people are unhappy with the Republic, not to treat the symptoms of it. I mean, if we arrest this Rapol fellow, what is it going to change? Will it make the workers happier with us? I think not. And then what? Do we arrest all of them? All, you know, seventy million? Even if it was possible, who’d work instead of them?”

Alnam chuckles. He gets that she’s right. He doesn’t even disagree with her. So much for hardlining.

“You’ve read the files, right?” she asks. The tone is all business-like now -- never mind they’re on the recreation deck.

“Of course. So far, Isk Povo Rapol has made eighteen transmissions. He talks about the flaws of the Republic in all of them. Quotes the numbers: that they make almost twenty-nine percent of all the GAR ammunition on Skados VI yet central governmental funding of medicine and education was cut in two consecutive years for the planet. He didn’t really make any appeals until eight weeks ago when he first voiced his doubts as to Skados remaining a part of the Republic. The next transmission is going to happen in three days. Since he’s an idol there or something, people are willing to listen. The local authorities have determined the transmissions are being aired from the planet capital. What else...”

“Yeah, local authorities. We can’t rely on them. They don’t like the RDS and won’t cooperate if they can find any loophole.”

“You think the location is a bogus?”

“Why not? It’s not like they have an actual location -- just an estimate. Nothing easier for them than to blame it on equipment deficiency when we find nothing.”

Would she like it to go like that? After a moment of deliberation, Alnam guesses not. Mtoro may have unorthodox sympathies, but she is an agent first.

“From what I’ve read, Agent Apani,” he likes calling her that -- it makes the Ithorian roll her eyes up slightly, “it almost seems like the authorities on Skados VI didn’t want to let this information out.”

“You can bet they didn’t. It all comes down to Senator Ktii, and she has bet on the support from Coruscant rather than her home planet. I’m not sure if there’s a less popular senator in the Galaxy right now than her.”

“Seems like a stupid move. She isn’t elected on Coruscant.”

Mtoro guffaws. “Are you sure about that?”

In the past few days, Alnam’s been wondering why Ven made him Mtoro’s partner specifically. Was it a deliberate move? To put two liberals together? To make Alnam spew out his own agenda? To make him spy on Mtoro? Some other reason?

“So the only one on Skados who wants to help us is the senator and her men,” he says.

“Senator Ktii only wants to help herself keep her position. “I’m not sure there’s anyone loyal to her at this point.”

“Our odds are getting better.”

“Officially, we can enlist the local lawkeepers’ help for operations that involve the use of force.”

“Do you think it may come to that?”

“I sure hope not. Even if it does, we should be careful: there’s a threshold of what orders the Cattesians will take from us. It’s not particularly high.”

Alnam’s in two minds about the case. He agrees with Mtoro that it’s complete nonsense and will lead to no positive outcome -- both for Skados VI and for the Republic. On the other hand, he is excited. So excited as he hasn’t been since his first year in the CorSec. He feels strong again. He feels young again. He feels fresh out of the academy again.

“But what about our contact?” he asks.

“Yes, Hvenda Obar. I wouldn’t count on him too much. He’s not an operative. He’s not even officially with the RDS.”

“A concerned citizen-type?”

“You can say that. A paid concerned citizen, of course.”

“Well, maybe he knows some people who can also help us for a price.”

“The reports mention that Obar has gone native, whatever that means. So maybe he does.”

“But we don’t really want to find out.”

“We really don’t.”

The liner enters the orbit, giving the passengers a chance to take holopictures of Skados VI. Skados VI looks good from space. It’s got some green. It’s got some blue. Doesn’t glow too much. Easy on the eyes. The other seven Skadoses can be seen lined up behind their only inhabitable sister.

Their shuttle is half-empty: the liner will proceed to better places to disembark in a standard hour or so.

“Are you lagging, Vad?” Mtoro asks him.

Alnam is. After four days in the hyperspace, the very concept of days and nights sounds outlandish.

It’s late morning where they land. Skados City Spaceport does not really lie within the city limits. The notion is weird to Alnam: on Coruscant, everything is within the city.

The RDS has priority during the identity check. It takes Mtoro and Alnam ten standard minutes to exit the main terminal. Alnam excuses himself. Walks to the public holo-relay.

He looks at his watch while waiting for the connection. It should be around 5 PM back home.

Yalgi’s hologram appears. Alnam is grateful it’s him who picked up the call.

“You’ve landed, Dad? You’re already there?”

“Yeah, I just did.”

“Well, how’s the planet? Have you seen--”

“I just landed. I haven’t really seen anything. How’re you doing?”

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“I suppose.”

“Alright. I’m okay too. The flight was great, actually. Really fancy ship -- can you imagine that?”

“Wow! Did you have, like, a fridge with booze in your room?”

Alnam smiles. “A minibar, yeah. And it’s called a cabin, I think. If it’s on a ship, you know. We also had a pool and all that. Some job I got, right?”

He can’t tell if he’s testing what Yalgi thinks about his transfer. It sounds like it, but why does he need a ten-year-old’s opinion on that, even if it’s his son?

Is he really trying to get Ormi’s opinion?

“Yeah. Maybe I could go with you one day.”

“Study well, get a good job, and we’ll see about that.” Seeing his son smile, Alnam smiles himself. Then he asks, “How’s your mom?”

“She’s okay. She’s coming home late today. Gotta get that exhibition ready for the weekend. You know what she is like when there’s an exhibition.”

Alnam does. Ormi’s talks about exhibits used to excite him once. He never knew a thing about art -- but she did, and it made him care.

“Yeah. Wait a minute, who’s going to feed you? Mrs. Ehhentau?”

“No. I ate at school.”

They chat for a while before Alnam says, “Alright, I really gotta go.”

“Will you call me later?”

“I have work to do, so I probably won’t be able to today. When I’m done, it’s going to be night on Coruscant.”

“Right! What time is it on Skados now?”

Alnam tells him what time it is. And then adds, “I love you, Son.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

He feels worn out after the conversation’s over. Can’t really put his finger on the whys. It wasn’t a bad conversation -- as far as their once-in-a-while conversations go.

Well, ain’t that all the whys you need? Every time you talk to your son is going to be special. In ten years, you’re gonna be remembering each time you’ve talked to him. And it’s not gonna be hard to recall all of them.

He’s done nothing to prevent it. Wanted to go to Ide Smates maybe even a year ago, but never actually went. Never made himself to. Always hoped all the shit in his life would resolve itself.

Ormi... Ormi has been pretty dormant about the divorce lately. Alnam doesn’t think she’s talked to him about it since his promotion.

And just like that, he allowed said fact to lull him.

But Ormi can be a rapid woman. It’s easy to forget that when you look at her: she looks classy. She looks very sober. She looks indecisive sometimes. She’s all that, he knows. But when she needs to be one, she turns into a Dathomiri viper ready to strike.

When she needs to equals when she feels anything can threaten her son. Even if that anything is his father.

No, he really needs to see Smates when he comes back. It’s not like he’s going for full custody, damn it! Just equal parts. Isn’t that fair? He’s a good father, she’s a good mother. Why should there be any preferential treatment? His job? What about it? He’ll find a way to make it work. He can take care of Yalgi when he’s on Coruscant. Can even come home earlier. Can wrestle that little right from Ven. Look: Ormi’s not even home yet, and her job doesn’t involve travelling to the Mid Rim!

When he takes his seat in a cab, Mtoro looks at him for a long time. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Thank you.”

The cab soars up to the thin, crest-like spires of Skados City, and Alnam realizes he didn’t lie to her.

He’s got a plan he’s decided on, and so he is fine.

.

.

.

Hvenda Obar’s apartment sits on the fourth floor of yet another building that looks more like a tree than a building. Alnam has had enough of that back at the hotel: all the gaps through which falls and certain death gaze at him make him dizzy.

“Why do they have to build everything like it’s a nest?” he asks. “We Humans used to live in caves, and now we tend to... well, look at Coruscant.”

“Some of it does look like a cave, if you haven’t noticed,” says Mtoro. “Actually, I prefer this to Coruscant. It’s more natural here.”

“Sure, whatever.”

The only way up to Obar’s door is by narrow winding stairs -- one of the many outside the oversized tree-house. Alnam is in a good shape, relatively speaking, but his breath grows heavy by the time he reaches the door.

It takes him a while to figure the doorbell out: it’s a tiny sensor at the top of the doorframe. You have to wave your hand in front of it to make the little bastard do its thing. It’s glitchy to boot and doesn’t register Alnam for the first time.

Finally, Obar opens up. He’s a Nautolan -- a very thin and short one. He wears a bandana half-hiding his tendrils. He wears enhanced reality goggles. He looks fucking stupid.

“Mister Obar,” Alnam says, “we’re RDS. My name is Vad Alnam, and this here is Agent Mtoro Apani. May we come in?”

“Of course!” Obar moves away from the door to let them in. “And please, Agents, call me Hvenda. I really am not used to all that mister crap.” He claps his hands and laughs. Funny guy.

His apartment is made of sharp lines and weird design choices. There are no inner walls, but the walls that limit it bend like it’s nobody’s business. Alnam doesn’t know the name for the shape Obar’s apartment has.

“You have been notified of our arrival?” Mtoro asks. “Good. Don’t you worry, Hvenda, we will not be staying here at your place.”

Obar laughs again. Alnam manages a smile. His head’s starting to hurt. Is it the weather? It’s summer in Skados City. Humidity is out the ass. He can feel the fucking sweat spots spreading out from under his underarms like schematic Confederate forces on an educational holovid.

Obar makes them some cafstim. It helps -- a little.

“I should make myself clear, Agents: I’m just an informer. I just live here, watch out for weird shit, and, you know, call the HQ if it does happen. I’m, so to speak, not really in the know.”

Listening to his voice makes Alnam wonder how much Obar smokes.

“We are aware of your role, Hvenda,” Mtoro says. “We require your knowledge of the place in general. Some customs, uh, things that we should hear about before we make a blunder.”

“Of course. That’s why I’m here! Well... just ask me,” the Nautolan laughs again. He’s kind of genuine about it, though -- on a better day, Alnam thinks, he could’ve liked him.

“This Isk Povo Rapol... Do you think he’s really a part of it?”

Obar turns to Alnam: “Well, that’s hard to say. The thing is, he’s really somebody who has benefitted from this world being a Republic world. There’s this program called, uh, The Authentic Cultural Development that is funded from the Republic budget. It’s not only a Skados thing -- they have it on Glee Anselm, too... On Darlon, as well, I think... Anyway, if I were Isk Povo Rapol, I wouldn’t have turned on the Republic.”

“But?” says Alnam.

“But if somebody was using my likeness and my voice to, you know, to shit on the Republic, I would’ve issued a statement. I’d have said I had nothing to do with it. I can appreciate the hand that feeds me.”

“And Rapol?”

“Povo Rapol did no such thing. Let’s see...” Obar turns his holo-terminal on. “Let’s just look up for the latest news on him. Aha: you see, it’s nothing but concerts and an occasional promotion of some brand.”

“I’d say his propaganda gig deserves a mention, too.”

“Oh, Agent Alnam, they don’t put that in the news on Skados. Yet everybody knows -- naturally.”

Alnam checks the images of Povo Rapol at the terminal.

“He looks bland,” he notices. “We just arrived this morning, and I must have seen at least a dozen more colorful guys in the streets. How come a singer looks so uninspired?”

“Ah, it’s a cultural thing. They evolved from birds, the Cattesians. Songs are still an important part of their mating rituals, so a famous singer always risks angering some people. So they have this tradition that if you make it as a singer, you have to look as, well, brown and dull and you can. They dye their feathers to basically proclaim they’re in it for the art, not for the chicks.

“But don’t get me wrong. Povo Rapol is as far from art as I am from Glee Anselm. The only difference is that I could go to Glee Anselm if I wanted to and Povo Rapol couldn’t do anything remotely resembling art in a lifetime.”

Mtoro’s constant inner growling -- Alnam has got used to it during the trip -- grows higher. “The Cattesians don’t seem to agree with you.”

“Art, Agent Apani, cannot appeal to the masses. Anything that does isn’t art -- by definition. I have studied their language a bit,” Obar laughs as if that is the best joke in the Galaxy, “so I know what I’m talking about. Take Beseshi Omil, for instance.” The Nautolan brings an image to the holoscreen. This Cattesian is far brighter of feather than Rapol. “You can bet he’s got not a credit from the ACD program. That’s because the Republic selects what they think is authentic for a world they have no idea about. Yeah, they’re not going to develop this guy.”

“Does he sing too?” Mtoro asks.

“He does, and how! Learning the tongue was worth it just to understand his songs. And all the cultural references... The rhymes... Ah, just the names of the songs are enough to give you the idea. _I’m Xim the Despot’s Genocidal Warrior_? You bet Povo Rapol wouldn’t sing that one!”

“I wonder why.” Alnam scratches his eye. “But let’s get back to Rapol.”

“Has he expressed any political views in the past?” asks Mtoro.

Obar thinks. “He supported Ktii during her first-term elections, but that was six years ago. Rode around with her during the canvassing, you know. But after that, I don’t think so.”

“And in his songs?” Mtoro is doing a good job. Alnam feels useless. It’s the headache, but he still does.

“His songs... bah, they’re all drivel. He had no heart, but she managed to break it all the same -- that kind of crap. Hm... maybe a year ago... there was one called _Strike!_ That’s how I’d translate it, and I think it’s a good enough variant.”

Alnam tries to do his duty. “Was it about strikes?”

“More like a call to one. Strikes were big then, with all the talks of replacing workers with droids. Even Ktii herself had to make a cautiously pro-Skados statement then, and that’s saying something.”

“Any contacts he might have made then?”

Obar turns to Mtoro. “Maybe, but back then, everybody was on the same side. Or so it seemed.”

“The song must have been recorded somewhere.”

Alnam nods. There must have been a location. A location from a year ago, sure -- but that beats no location other than “somewhere on Skados”.

“ _Fozatta_ did the recording, his usual label. I wanted to suggest that you check Povo Rapol’s producer. Giburin Fozatta.”

Mtoro harrumphs. “Isn’t he Coruscant-based?”

“He is, in fact. But the studio is here on Skados. I heard he bought it just to accommodate Povo Rapol.”

“So this Fozatta guy,” says Alnam, “was willing to take a political stance? Uncommon for a producer.”

“As I said, Agent, the whole planet was pretty much uniform about that stance.”

“So there was money to be made.”

“Precisely.”

“Is there any to be made now?”

The Nautolan smiles. His ER goggles paint his large dark eyes blue. “There always is some. But on the other hand, I don’t get the feeling people are nearly as, you know, monolithic now as they were back then. Automatization was a domestic,” Obar’s smile grows a little wider when he says this word, “issue. The Cattesians could disagree with the Republic then, but they still remained its part. Now... now it’s different. If they rise up, they will have to change their lives. Whatever the outcome is, their lives will change. It’s a commitment, and commitments are never easy. So there are far more doubters today.”

Alnam thinks. Mtoro lets him do that. Is she testing him?

Let her be. Alnam is prepared.

“We’ll need to check Fozatta anyway,” he says.

“He might not even be on Skados.”

“All the better. In his absence, we’ll have more room to operate at his studio.”

Mtoro growls her approval. This sound is eerily pleasant, and Alnam’s headache gets a bit more bearable.

“Hvenda,” she asks, “whom from the planetary security can we trust?”

Obar shrugs. “I’m not an agent, Agent. I’m not really in contact with the local cops.”

Alnam seriously doubts that. Something tells him said cops will learn about Mtoro and him and their questions before the sun sets.

“I wouldn’t trust any of them if I were you. They’re all locals. Cattesians.”

“Whom are they loyal to?” asks Mtoro.

A good question. It can’t be the senator.

“Each city has its own force and its own chief. They all play their cards close to chest. There isn’t a single authority over them.”

“But what are their sentiments?”

“Well, I don’t believe you’ll find any help -- any real help, that is -- among them. I wouldn’t call them secessionists, but...”

“But they aren’t really friends of the Republic, either,” Alnam finishes.

“Maybe not so much that as the fact they know what the workers think about Povo Rapol and how they’d react if someone -- you -- arrested him. They don’t want to give up one of their own to Coruscant and they don’t want to face an uprising.”

They’re leaving when Alnam asks Obar for a headache pill. Mtoro says she’s got some back at the hotel. Alnam furrows him brow -- like he can’t wait that long.

The Nautolan takes him to the bathroom -- the only space in his apartment that is separated from the rest of it. While he’s scrabbling around for a blister pack, Alnam looks back to see if Mtoro is watching: she’s not, she’s leaving.

“And let’s say I needed something a tad stronger,” he whispers fingering Obar’s shoulder. “Where would I go for that?”

The Nautolan stops in his tracks. The Nautolan looks dead save for the newsfeed scrolling past his eyes. The Nautolan gulps. Alnam knows his gut feeling didn’t fail him. He can tell a junkie a parsec away.

Obar’s trying to think. Not something that goes well when you’re stuck with an RDS agent in a small bathroom on Skados VI. Obar’s trying to feel about for a path that doesn’t end with him in jail -- or dead.

“I might have an ampule or two, Agent,” he exhales.

“Glitterstim?”

“My best friend here,” the Nautolan smiles. “The nicest one I’ve ever had.”

Alnam waits for Obar to find the stuff. Then he claps the informant on the back. “Leave it. I guess you need it more. I’ll take that headache pill, though.”

Always seek leverage -- isn’t that what his father used to say?

Mtoro asks him as they walk to their speeder cab: “Do you play any instrument, Vad?”

It makes Alnam smile. “No. Why?”

She hesitates, it seems. “I play some Ithorian double-flute.”

“Really? That’s cool. I’d like to hear it one day.”

He can tell they both know it’s not true. But there’s no harm in this lie -- for a change.


	8. Krev Devin IV

Krev paces his room -- a habit that annoyed every last woman he’s had. He’s glad he doesn’t have one now.

The back of his head is still itchy. Still can’t believe no blaster bolt scratched it.

It seems it’ll have to wait.

Krev hates waiting.

Being honest, he hates the whole situation.

Alnam’s got his balls in the vises. He knows: Manaan. Who Krev is. Where Krev is. Guys from Ixtlar who want to know that last one.

Shit.

The old man said there are coppers here on Telos IV who know all that as well. Krev would really, really, really like to know their names. That wouldn’t do jack, though. Kill a copper -- and you’re a dead man. Cops are the tightest outfit there is -- on any planet.

However: Krev’s got something on Alnam too. Alnam’s got a hard-on for the clone’s diary. Krev’s got said diary. He actually destroyed the hard drive after getting home that night. The contents: copied to Holonet storage. Free plan: no need for a lot of space. No need to make a transaction that would bleep on Alnam’s radar.

What’s Alnam’s endgame? Krev’s not sure he believes what Alnam told him about that. To hold all the higher-ups accountable for their crimes -- nice tale. Vygo Alnam isn’t some downtrodden freedom fighter. Been a part of the establishment for most of his life. Now he’s himself in a fight with the establishment. Doesn’t take a genius to see what’s what.

There’s probably some obscure party now in the Senate financed by Alnam RoboTech. Sleeper agents. Ready to go for a kill when the time comes. Kill -- and become the new establishment.

That’s all nice and good. Krev’s got no objections. But: what the fuck does Alnam want from him?

If you choose to believe the man himself -- and Krev chooses not to -- then Vygo Alnam wants to use Krev to check his own conclusions. A real man of science, that one.

Then what if Krev’s conclusions don’t match his? Does the entire kill-the-establishment thing get dropped? Or does Krev?

Yeah, Krev hates the situation.

Telos IV is unsafe. Never was, it turns out. And here Krev’s been thinking the coppers he’s dealt with on Telos were just nice enough not to run any checks on him.

Sometimes, he manages to surprise even himself with his stupidity.

Alright. It’s time to change his dislocation. But if he does it now, Alnam’s gonna notice. He’s gonna notice and he’s gonna take measures -- perhaps, even drastic ones. Krev remembers those transport ships on Atnakis burning on their way to the surface.

This time, it won’t be a mistake.

He can feel the cold, reeking breath of the nice boys from Ixtlar on his neck. Couldn’t for the past five years -- or convinced himself he couldn’t.

They won’t be so nice to him -- not after he killed two of their buddies. Add the exec, too -- he wasn’t with the outfit, but shared the home planet with them. They probably are gonna cut him into pieces -- reeeeeal slow. Maybe they’ve even got some exotic beast to feed him to.

No, it’s time he parted with Telos IV.

Krev always feels a bit better when he has a goal. It may be a shit goal, but it’s better than none at all.

His goal: get off Telos without Alnam noticing.

It gets him going. He starts plotting. He feels alive.

Sparsely-populated worlds -- fuhgeddaboudit. They’ll find him there. He doesn’t know how to survive the jungles or the desert. Can hold his own for a while in the wild in a moderate climate, but try to find a planet with one that’s not all bought up for resorts and such.

No. A big place. Unrestricted. Like Corellia. Like Carratos.

Like Coruscant.

Oh yes.

This thought electrifies him. Makes his blood sparkle like Glovan white. Makes him feel twenty again.

Krev fucking loves Coruscant.

He lived there for a year or so after he’d made his first big score on Kessel. Got himself a fancy speeder -- back when DC0040 was still considered fancy. Got himself a job at a small bank. Got himself a girl in the Moso District, in the shadow of the RJCDC tower. Things didn’t work out with her -- maybe because Krev loved Coruscant more than he did her -- but back then, it seemed as though something may yet work out in his life.

He remembers the first time he saw the Galactic City. He walked out of West Championne. The morning sun blew him tender kisses. And the impossible, cyclopean city was all around him, rearing its skyscrapers so high up Krev could see them a hundred miles away. It swallowed him -- made him a blood cell in its monstrous capillaries. Krev loved nothing more than to let the flow take care of him no matter where it was taking him: to the gang-ridden lower levels or to the middle-class condos or to the heart of the planet itself.

Now the heart has called to him again through trillions of cubic kilometers of deadness, and he knew he could not resist this call.

Now that Krev has a goal, obstacles stop being insurmountable.

Alright. What he needs: some money. To rock Alnam to sleep. A new name.

Money: he’s got some twelve key. He doesn’t really follow the cost of living on Coruscant, but he can’t imagine his twelve key sustaining him for long. Some of it he’ll have to spend on a ticket anyway.

Alnam: Krev knows the old bastard’s watching him. Even went to a couple Holonet cafes yesterday to reinforce his story. Let the voyeur do his thing, if he must. Play for him. But that’s not gonna put Alnam to sleep. He’s going to get results. He’s going to trust Krev. When he trusts Krev, he’s going to allow him some more autonomy. When he does, he’s going to pay Krev.

Name: enough of this senseless bravado. There are files on you, Krev Devin, at every police station in the Republic. You’re a murderer, and they know it. They won’t hold back.

All doable. Better yet, all line up in a system.

Work for Alnam. Get him to trust you. Get some credits from him. Get a new identicard. Get on a ship and get off this piece of rock.

Can he really escape the police, the mobsters, and now Alnam as well? Shit, why not -- not even someone as rich as Vygo Alnam can find you if you hide yourself well enough. The Galaxy is a big place. Even on Coruscant alone there is what, a trillion people? And that’s just the official numbers. You’d need a million lifetimes to check every single one of them.

And not even Vygo Alnam’s got that many.

Sure, it might take a while. It will. Alnam’s gotta require real results to trust him. Fine: Krev will get him some.

Krev looks at his holo-terminal. What if Alnam is for real? What if wants to turn the Republic into something better? Into something viable? Into something that doesn’t have contingency orders involving mass executions?

Well, let him, thinks Krev. Let him take what I find out and use it as he sees fit.

But I’d rather face the consequences of his passionarity on Coruscant.

Having a goal really boosts Krev. He can’t remember when he was this productive last when not on the Big G.

He looks up ConCare in the clone’s files. Two hits: both in the Dangor Industries Engineers archive.

Hit one, buried among the descriptions of communications on Geonosis: “They [two of the engineers the deserter was kind of close to] said they could never talk to those who went through ConCare.” Not much to go by.

Hit two, talking about the resolution of the second battle: “The Geos then started to mass up at Hill 1411. Our task was to protect the engineers and their equipment. It got really tense. There were like thousands of them. And we, we had just the basic combat training, essentially. We were trained to build first and foremost. That’s our purpose. That was our purpose. Our battalion was always the first or the second at the shooting range among the Engineer Corps. But when... when we beat like the first wave, we were joking. Saying the bugs must be running out of bugs. But then there was another wave. And another. And another. And I lost count. We lost a few boys. It’s always hard. But that time, the Geos, they used some gas bombs. If you get hit... we couldn’t remove the helmets of some of our lads. The body just bloats. We started breaking. It’s one thing to do well at a range, right? But then the HQ sent us some reinforcements. I later heard that the droid foundry had been blown up by then. That’s why they we got some more troops. They were able to reposition some more our way. There were two LAATs. One got hit midair and had to get away. The other one, though, they could land it. You can fit like forty people in a LAAT. The specs say it should be thirty, but you always try to optimize. So there were maybe thirty-five or forty troopers there. And that was enough. They didn’t care when one of them got blown to pieces or caught the gas. They were there to shoot, and they just shot. That was all they did. Then, just after the battle was over, I saw they were ConCare boys. We tried to thank them, but we knew there would be no use. They just don’t respond when you talk to them. I’m not even sure they have names.”

Krev thinks. Who were those ConCare boys? Private military? That would be a laugh -- if the Republic subcontracts its war. Nah. Probably not that. A weird name for a PMC. Also: the clone writes his buddies and he didn’t notice whom their reinforcements consisted of until after the battle. Conclusion: the ConCare boys wore standard armor -- or something close enough to standard not to be immediately noticeable in the heat of battle.

The first hit. The engineers from Dangor Industries, or Forakk, or Ulmis and Ordulann could never talk to those who had gone through ConCare. What’s that mean?

Can ConCare be some bootcamp for doubly artificial tubers? Who knows what fancy names they’ve got for such facilities. Maybe they brainwash the poor fuckers there. But why? They already know only what they’re told in their test tubes. Maybe it’s like a reeducation camp for those who start wavering in their faith? Maybe the deserter deserted because of it?

An okay version. Krev will return to it.

Another version: ConCare is a name of an operation. This one sounds more plausible. Those who went through it have changed. Maybe it was something so horrible it broke the entire unit. A contingency order comes to mind.

Can be that. Makes sense. This is something that would get Alnam all amped up: a huge atrocity ordered by the Chancellor. Something like that can sway public opinion -- unlike another clone bootcamp. Sentient engineers wouldn’t talk to them -- also makes sense. They were probably in on what had happened.

Krev likes this version a lot. It sounds right.

He types the name into the Holonet search. It should return a blank result if he’s right.

But it doesn’t. There are millions of results.

ConCare is a medical firm. ConCare is a BioTech Industries daughter company. ConCare is a big thing in the Outer Rim.

ConCare is the shit.

Krev is unwilling to let go of his theory. He looks up GAR operations tied to ConCare. Looks up cloning technologies tied to it.

Nothing.

This doesn’t prove anything. There can be a spec op related even to a known company that’s still classified.

But it’s a medical company, not a planet or anything. Little room for atrocities -- at least, if they’re performed by clones, not the company’s personnel.

Look at the search results. A ton of them, but almost all are about ConCare’s stocks. Press-releases: same.

Krev keeps looking into ConCare for half an hour. Even then, he can’t tell what it makes or does.

It’s probably just a money-laundering thing. But what makes it so important?

Krev feels a snap inside of his head, and it’s not a blood clot blocking a vessel.

ConCare is based in the Outer Rim. BioTech Industries isn’t.

He’s seen that before. Forakk, Ulmis, and Ordulann.

He looks ConCare up in the tax register.

“Would you believe that,” he says aloud.

The fucking thing is funded as a part of the Outer Rim Development Program. Doesn’t have to pay taxes for fifteen years. Sweet.

He looks up Forakk. There’s jackshit on Forakk -- he can’t even find the year it was founded, let alone by what entity.

Things start looking like a system.

So: Inner Rim and Expansion Territories companies are putting up dummies in the Outers. Thanks to some asinine bill (Krev finds it -- it’s written so poorly he can’t make it past the second sentence), these dummies are freed from taxation.

You can do anything you want in the Outer Rim -- without paying a credit to the Republic.

Cracking this mystery feels good, but Krev’s not satisfied. There must be more to it -- he can sense it.

Maybe it’s the scale? Maybe there are thousands of such dummy firms in the Outer Territories. Maybe some big companies have transferred most of their business there just to avoid paying up.

But that’s just plain old boring tax evasion. Krev isn’t impressed and he doubts Vygo Alnam would be, either.

He follows the scent of lies.

Who owns ConCare? BioTech has the majority stake. That’s to be expected. Who owns BioTech?

That’s where the things get interesting: its parent conglomerates, TaggeCo and the Neuro-Saav Corp, only hold forty percent of stocks together.

Dragoon Merchandise holds forty-two.

Krev’s heard of TaggeCo, of course. Half the things he’s had in his life were made by it or its subsidiaries. He’s even heard of Neuro-Saav, although their holo-equipment was always too expensive for him.

But he sure as hell hasn’t heard of Dragoon Merchandise.

Krev is no business expert. He hasn’t heard of many thousands of companies. But his nose smells something weird.

BioTech is a legit enterprise. It actually makes shit: prosthetics, drugs, medical equipment. It’s on a contract with the Republic to provide medical care to the citizens of the war-torn worlds in the Mid Rim.

It’s a huge corporation controlled by some no-name thing.

Dragoon Merchandise: a familiar picture. Doesn’t produce anything, not even merchandise. Provides no services.

CEO: Felvath Dangor.

“No fucking way,” says Krev.

He’s a very uncertain hound: he looks who Felvath Dangor is on the Holonet. Doesn’t believe his smell has led him anywhere.

Felvath’s got no personal page on _The Republic Encyclopedia._ He’s deserved a mention, though: “Dangor has an older sister, Daila, and two younger brothers, Isbath and Felvath.”

Page: _Ars Dangor._ As in, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s aide on Senate commissions Ars Dangor.

Dangor Industries, a quick search tells Krev, was founded in the year 19 BRS by Bouris Dangor, whose daughter Daila is the current CEO of it.

Bouris’s kids are doing pretty great in life. Only Isbath seems to not have an interstellar company or position to his name.

Krev searches for him in conjunction with ConCare: nothing.

Well, it’s not much. Shit, it’s a huge mess the Republic’s got going on -- probably hundreds of billions of credits left untaxed and who knows what else -- but corruption is nothing new. This is probably not even enough to depose Dangor, let alone Palpatine. In theory, everything is legal -- unless the tax exemption law for the Outer Rim companies is made illegal all of a sudden. Krev doubts that’ll happen.

No, there must be more. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Not worth the time he’s poured into it.

Not even worth the life of the poor clone bastard.

Krev keeps digging.

After a few hours of nothing new, he shakes things up. Changes his angle.

Ulmis Systems.

Surprisingly, this one isn’t a subsidiary of anything. Based on Artesia. Almost fifteen standard years old. Apart from its dealings with Forakk, doesn’t seem to have much going for it.

The Ordulann Conglomerate.

Aha, this birdie is more interesting. It’s composed of a dozen firms from the Expansion Region and the Colonies. However, the page header shows more than a dozen logos. Much more. Krev runs a few through the search engine. Here you go: Ertze Banking still exists, just not as a part of Ordulann. Reason: it’s a CIS company. Same goes for B’dan and Lenma.

Alright. Don’t get ahead of yourself. They could’ve had a falling out with these companies because of the war. There’s nothing to say they’re still in cahoots. The header? Just a lazy designer. Krev knew a designer guy on Manaan -- before the Manaan happened to him -- who was fond of talking about the shortcuts you can make in his line of work. And besides, you found everything at free access.

It has to mean it’s nothing, right?

The thing is, Krev ain’t sure. People usually don’t waste their lives searching for company owners and stakeholders. Maybe that’s not a convincing argument for those in charge of said companies -- but it just can be for their underpaid hirelings who do Holonet page design.

Okay, he tells himself, there’s nothing concrete. Keep thinking.

He thinks. What if you suppose there is a connection between the CIS and Ordulann today?

Could the engineers on Geonosis be with the CIS? They already were there when the deserter and his battalion arrived. Maybe the big thing Alnam’s after is some cover-up for Republic and CIS businesses ending up in bed with one another?

Sounds plausible. Alnam has a vested interest in it?

It still proves shit. Keep thinking.

ConCare, revisited: no real information on its Holonet page. Buzzwords upon buzzwords -- no value, just taking up space because space is meant to be taken. Because people who don’t want to waste their lives diving into the fine-prints expect it to be taken. If there’s nothing on the front page, they might get suspicious.

Keep diving.

And Krev dives. In about four hours, he goes through every last page of the ConCare site. Even technical data specifying the visitor counter integration.

But in the end, he doesn’t need to go that deep. What he’s looking for is stranded on the page bearing the address /News_2. Unlike just /News, it doesn’t have links to it from the main page. Krev finds one on /Unindexed_pages. There he gets from /Our_achievements -- it appears in the footer of that page and no other one. Never underestimate the designer’s laziness.

There, at the bottom of /News_2, sits an article from 12-10-19. Title: _New Heights Reached in Lobotomy Field_.

“Fuck’s a lobotomy?” Krev asks.

Then he looks it up, and the pieces fall into place.


	9. Vad Alnam V

If droids could sweat, this 3PO would sweat a river.

Captain Aloii of the Skados City Police doesn’t choose his words carefully. Alnam can hear it in his angry hisses and chirps. The poor droid has to choose them for Aloii.

“Captain Aloii says the case clearly doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the RDS. Nothing relating to it has happened off-world, nor has it affected citizens of any other planet.”

“This case,” Mtoro sighs, “concerns the stability of the Republic, which is reason enough for us to intervene.”

The captain squawks again. The droid turns to him.

Aloii must’ve used some very, very serious words judging by how long it takes the droid to relay them to Mtoro and Alnam.

“The captain suggests that there are many things more worthy of the RDS’ attention on other planets.”

The captain’s deputy, a mute Cattesian named Skevo, moves his feathered appendages over a web of laser sensors. A synthesized voice chirps them to the droid, and she translates, “The deputy says Skados VI is a peaceful place and loyal to the Republic.”

“We are here to help it stay that way,” says Alnam. He knows it’s a wrong thing to say, but he just can’t help himself: the whole conversation sounds like a farce.

Aloii’s long neck swells when he replies. His feathering has lost its luster, but something tells Alnam: this one was never a singer.

“The captain says he cannot sanction your activities, Agents. Unfortunately.”

“We do not need your sanction,” says Mtoro. “With all due respect, Captain, the Domestic Security Office deciding our presence was required on your planet is all we need to be present on your planet.”

The captain and the mute start talking together. Alnam expects one of them to stop once they realize it, but no -- they both keep going.

The droid doesn’t know what to do. They should make a protocol unit based on an Ithorian, Alnam thinks.

Finally, 3PO gathers her thoughts and says, “Captain Aloii maintains that this case is well within the jurisdiction of the planetary police. Therefore, there is no--”

“Look, I’ve already explained why it doesn’t matter. You can repeat as much as you like that it’s not our jurisdiction, but it won’t change anything.”

This is the first time Alnam is seeing Mtoro this annoyed. It’s a somewhat scary sight -- and would be even more so were he a fifty-kilo bird.

Captain Aloii isn’t easily moved, though. He starts his song once again.

“The deputy says the Senate is not at liberty to interfere in the legal process of the member planets,” says the droid. “The captain says the case is firmly under his personal control.”

“So firmly that no progress has been made in eighteen weeks?” Alnam asks.

The droid looks at him -- unsure if she should translate it.

“The next transmission is scheduled for tomorrow,” Alnam continues. “What has been done to prevent or track it? What is your plan for tomorrow’s evening, Captain?”

Aloii makes a cackling sound. He looks at Skevo, and the deputy covers his eyes with his wings momentarily. They exchange a couple of words the droid doesn’t even bother to translate.

“There’s nothing we can do here, Mtoro.”

“I’m afraid so. Frankly speaking, I’m appalled by how uncooperative you appear, Captain.”

“Obstruction of justice comes to mind.”

This time, the droid is dutiful. Maybe she can tell what’s meant to be delivered to the other party and what’s not.

Aloii is unperturbed.

“The captain says that while we are loyal to the Republic, we adhere to all its principles including the right to self-governing.”

.

.

.

The Fozatta studio building is duracrete -- one of the ten duracrete buildings in Skados City. The others are all temples of other planets’ religions, the audio guide in a cab says.

Alnam is just happy to see a building that looks like a building.

“Do you think the chief’s going to throw a wrench in our works?” he asks Mtoro as they exit the cab. The platform in front of the studio is sunlit. Three or four groups of young Cattesian women take holopictures of themselves with the building in the background.

“He’s just pretending to be a thickhead,” the Ithorian growls. “He’s not that stupid in reality, let me tell you.”

“There are just two of us here. Just reminding you.”

“Do you take me for a go-in-blasters-blazing type? Sorry to disappoint you, Vad, but I’m not. Especially not if it’s against the police the blasters are supposed to be blazing.”

“A damn shame. I was getting ready for a good shootout.”

Mtoro thinks for a moment before she asks: “You ever been in one?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Then I can count on you if things go sour.”

It’s cool inside the entrance hall, never mind the transparisteel ceiling. Golden statuettes line the floor and the wide half-swirl of stairs. Runner rugs: red with a large golden letter Forn in the middle of each. Holoposters of bands and singers, Cattesian and otherwise, shimmer on the walls.

Rich kitsch.

No one inside. Nobody even guards the door. For the locals, the tenth duracrete edifice also counts as a temple.

Finally, a man with a ponytail exits a door on the second level and walks down the stairs. Notice the sound of his footsteps: slippers on long, long-since-washed pile of the rugs. Walks at a leisurely pace.

“Can I help you?” The voice is also leisurely.

“We’re with the RDS,” says Mtoro.

“RDS?” the man’s eyebrows crawl up. “Oh me, oh my. This is a music studio. We record music here? _Fozatta Records_? It says so on the door?”

“That’s right. Agent Alnam and I would like to see the supervisor here.”

“A supervisor, really?”

This one’s probably not on spice. Death sticks, more likely. A one-hundred-percent junkie, though -- Alnam’s sure of it. His instincts tell him so. His instincts tell him to apprehend the fancy pants. His instincts make him a dog, and the only leash is the headlines calling police brutality.

“Really,” says Mtoro. “And you are..?”

“Name’s Odoacer Giles.”

Alnam grins. A name to match the man.

“In Mr. Fozatta’s absence, I am tasked with supervising the studio. I suppose, that would make me the supervisor.”

“Great,” says Mtoro. “It means we’re making progress.”

Giles’s face feigns attention. A junkie giveaway: you can always tell when the attention is real and when it’s fake.

Giles is fake as a toy blaster.

“You’ve heard of the transmissions Isk Povo Rapol’s been making,” Alnam says. Don’t ask a junkie anything -- tell him.

“I’ve... I might have. Some political nonsense. Well, obviously, it’s not coming from the real guy, you know. Not from the real Povo Rapol -- he’s made no such statements... to my knowledge. And to the knowledge of _Fozatta Records.”_

“Why don’t we talk in your office, Mr. Giles?” asks Mtoro.

The hololabel next to Giles’s office door says Giburin Fozatta. Giles feels right at home at a single-piece wroshyr table, though. Not even a huge portrait of Fozatta hanging above it bothers him.

“If you’ve got any business with Mr. Fozatta or Isk Povo, you came to the wrong place, Agents. They’re both on Coruscant presently, and I can’t really tell you when they’re going to grace us with their visit.”

“Well, maybe.” Alnam smiles Giles his most charming smile. “But to tell you the truth, we just wanted to see the studio. I mean, it’s kind of a cult destination at this point, don’t you think? All the legends you’ve recorded here...”

He glances at Mtoro, and she doesn’t fail him: “Old Man Eagle and the Broad Boys... HOM... Torpu C’Dzovi...”

“We didn’t record C’Dzovi on Skados,” Giles says as he files his nails. “It was on Coruscant. But I can see where you’re coming from! Lotsa great stuff been done here, too.”

Alnam spreads his arms. “Right? That’s why I told Agent Apani, ‘Our case might be a pile of shit, but at least we’ll get to see _Fozatta Records!’“_

“That’s brilliant, man!” Giles laughs. “Where can I get a job on which I can travel the Galaxy and, like, see places?”

Alnam shrugs. Anyone who’s not junkied out of his mind can see how fabricated Alnam’s smile is.

“I mean...” The supervisor looks up at Fozatta’s giant face. Giburin’s younger than Alnam would imagine a music studio boss: around forty standard. Sports a fucking undercut, too.

“I mean,” Giles goes on, “all I do is sit in the office, you know. That’s fucked up, man.”

“You know what else is?” Alnam slaps the table. The wood is so smooth he wants to do it again immediately. “We’re here to see your office!”

“Right! That’s fucking brilliant!”

A well-off junkie: can see the beauty in a non-high moment.

“You want something to drink, Agents?”

Mtoro shakes her hand.

“Regrettably, we are on duty,” Alnam smiles on. “Man, but I really hoped we’d meet Povo Rapol today, too. I’m not really into him myself, but I wanted him to sign, you know, an album for my son. Did I miss him by a lot?”

Something changes in Giles’s eyes. A blink, and it’s gone.

Shit. Don’t be so pushy.

“I don’t...” says Giles. “I haven’t seen him in a while. He’s on Coruscant. It’s not fair, man. Imagine how many hot girls there are on Coruscant! Any species you want. Do you know how hard it is to find a mammalian here?”

“Not sure I want to.”

Mtoro makes a little cough. Coming from her, it sounds like a reek getting very pissed off. “The studio, Mr. Giles.”

“Oh yeah! Right.”

Looking at all the equipment in the studio, Alnam wonders how Yalgi would like it here. Probably would have the time of his life amid all the control desks and alien instruments.

And maybe, Yalgi would have a better understanding of what to look for than his father does.

He looks at his partner. By the look on her face, Alnam can tell: this is where the limit to her knowledge of the music world lies.

“Well,” says Giles, “here the magic happens. The transparisteel,” he knocks on it, “is made by the same manufacturer that makes, like, panic rooms for senators. Shit, I forget the name, but you get the gist.”

“Can you broadcast from here?” Alnam asks. The consoles and the note-sets that look more like torture devices make him desperate.

A junkie Giles may be, but he’s smarter than this. “I’m not a technician, but as far as I know, no, you can’t. You’d have to talk to our tech guy, Bechin. But he’s on a vacation in the other hemisphere. He’s not coming back for, like, another month.”

“An entire month?” says Mtoro. “How are you going to record any new songs until then?”

“We don’t have any scheduled. In any case, I can operate the studio -- as long as I don’t have to change any settings.”

.

.

.

“Fuck me, that was useless,” Alnam tells Mtoro as they exit the building. Now the sun’s reeeeeally frying. He should get some tanning lotion if he doesn’t want to get cancer.

“We’ll see about that,” she replies.

“What’s to see about it? Theoretically, Rapol can be broadcasting from here. Or he can not. We’re no closer to the solution than we were before we arrived on Skados.”

“Have some patience, Vad.”

“I don’t know if this is usual routine for the RDS, but it’s my first case. It’s my first case, and it’s gonna look bad to the brass.”

“Oh, poor Vad. What are you going to do?”

He looks at her. Why is she so cheerful?

He really doesn’t get it.

Eventually, Mtoro gets tired of his silence and says, “Why do you think we went to the police headquarters?”

It clicks.

“We let them know why we’re here. You think they’re watching us, and if the studio is the real location, they’re going to act.”

“Learn from old woman Mtoro while she’s still alive.” She chuckles and then adds: “Greenhorn.”

“Are you sure Aloii knows the real location, though?” he asks, trying to keep the Ithorian’s pace.

“I guess we’ll find that out, too.”

“Or not -- if he decides we can’t hope to crack this place open.”

Mtoro opens her purse. At first, it looks as if she’s feeding the birds -- non-sentient ones -- on the platform in front of _Fozatta Records,_ but then Alnam notices all the crumbs dissipate before hitting the ground.

“Nano-droids,” he guesses.

Mtoro groans in agreement.

“When do I get to use them?”

“Even I get only a hundred capsules a year. So this is a special occasion.”

“Now we’ll see if the cops come to chat with the Giles fellow. Not if they call him, though. Might be a waste of capsules.”

“Would you make calls that confirm you know of illegal activities? I doubt they have a secure line from the precinct to the studio.”

Alnam nods. “Alright then.”

“Nice work with the druggie talk back there,” Mtoro tells him in a cab. “You sure you chose the right walk of life? You seem like you mingle with that crowd real sleek.”

“Excuse me? I worked on some major anti-drug cases back in the CorSec. Don’t tell me you just skimmed through my reports.”

“If you want more involvement from me, you should take a writing lesson from _The Honest Herald_ guys.”

It suddenly worries Alnam that she speaks of _The Herald._ ”What are you getting at?”

“Nothing. They just have a style.”

.

.

.

Obar opens the door fully -- a sign of trust?

“Can I come in?” Alnam says.

The Nautolan lets him in. Nothing has changes in his apartment. Nothing could, Alnam supposes.

“Look, I’m sorry about yesterday.”

Obar waves his hand: don’t mention it, but Alnam doesn’t stop.

“It’s just the fucking headache. I needed to get off somehow. What I did was, uh, unethical and ungrateful.”

The informant’s eyes are still suspicious behind the ever-changing pattern of newsfeed. “Do you need some...”

“No. No, I don’t do it, really. You shouldn’t either.”

Obar’s smile is sad. “Yeah. Well, cafstim?”

“I brought something better.”

The Nautolan grins when he sees a bottle of Corellian whiskey. He might just have a couple more friends than glitterstim.

He takes two glasses out of a cupboard and some cheese out of a fridge.

“Will Agent Apani be joining us?”

“No, not today.”

Alnam waits for a follow-up question. None comes.

“How is the investigation going?” Obar asks while Alnam opens the bottle.

“Productively, I’d say. We went to the Fozatta studio. Didn’t catch the guy himself there, but his assistant was of help.”

Whiskey in the glasses glows like embers in a fireplace -- even in the dim light of Obar’s room.

“For your investigation, then?”

“Nah. For Skados.”

Whiskey burns inside as much as it does without.

“Long live the Republic,” the Nautolan exhales.

Alnam has never tasted cheese like this. The taste is sour but not unpleasant.

“They have cattle here?” he asks.

“Why, they do. There’s even a festival every year dedicated to the domestication of the nje. Generally, the food is pretty good.”

“I eat at the hotel. It’s just the usual stuff there.”

“Right. Well... it’s good if you can live without poultry and eggs.”

“Seriously? That’s off-limits on Skados?”

“Yeah. You’d think with how much birds eat other birds, it wouldn’t be, but it is. I guess the Cattesians can’t stand the thought of seeing other species indulging.”

Alnam laughs, and Obar joins him. Readily so.

Another glass.

“So this fellow at the studio,” Alnam says, “he really pissed his pants when he heard who we were. Odoacer Giles, can you imagine that?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

“He told us he’s a supervisor when Fozatta is off-planet. Maybe he was lying, and he’s just a guardsman. He wasn’t completely clueless, though.”

Another glass.

“Not completely clueless, but a complete moron. I was this close to shooting him on the spot,” Alnam brings his forefinger and thumb an inch apart from one another, “this close, I swear.”

He almost forgets to laugh as he says it.

“That’s the small-time official syndrome,” says Obar. “He thinks, you know, since he’s in charge of cleaning services or something, he’s a big shot.”

Alnam barely registers his words. “This is the type of guy... cocksuckers like this would typically orbit my wife. Artist types, you know. Singer types.”

“Oh, so you’re married, Agent?”

Alnam glances at Obar. “No.”

The Nautolan is nice enough not to press him. The whiskey isn’t.

“We’re going through the thing.” Another glass down. “My parents got separated when I was what, thirteen or fourteen. Now I’m putting my son through the same shit. I mean, he’s even younger than that. It cannot be good for him, right?”

The Nautolan makes a half-shrug.

“When I get back to Coruscant, I’m going to find a good lawyer. A good lawyer, yes. It’s my son, right? I have my duties to him. I must be his parent. I have to do it. And I don’t,” Alnam doesn’t like how apologetic his voice sounds but can do nothing about it, “and I don’t want to take him from his mother. She’s a good mother, it’s... I’m not saying she’s not. The boy should have both his parents. That’s the fucking... That’s how it supposed to be.”

With the fifth glass on the way to his stomach, he hardly notices Obar’s asked him a question.

“What’s that?”

“Did you live with your father or mother?”

Alnam laughs. “Try boarding school. Neither he nor she had time for me -- even before the divorce. My father -- you know my father -- he always had this businessman approach to things. Nothing matters if it doesn’t make money. And Mom... well, she’s a...” He waves his hands for a bit trying to find a word. “A socialite. Old aristocracy. You know, a distant relation of the Demicis. Ahhh, let’s have another one.”

He spills some on the table while refilling the glasses.

“For the RDS?” Obar proposes.

“Fuck that! RDS... Do you know what I had to do to get in the RDS?”

“If that’s, uh, classified...”

“I won’t go into the classified parts of it. Ah, you should see your face! What, do you think I had to execute somebody to prove my loyalty? Nah. It’s nowhere near as dramatic.” Alnam sighs. Why are you telling him all this, a distant voice in his head cries out. He pays it no mind. “Just had to... rough a guy up. Fuck, I didn’t even rough him up. We just talked. But it felt like I was roughing him up. That it did.”

Obar remains silent, but at his point, Alnam doesn’t need him to reply.

“I don’t even know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“Here on Skados?”

“In general. I don’t know that anymore. When I was in the CorSec, I had a purpose, you know. I thought it sucked, but I had a purpose. What am I doing here? Isn’t it, you know, freedom of speech? What Povo Rapol is doing? If I’m against freedom of speech, what does it make me?”

“Well, if--”

“But enough about me! I’m just talking and talking... and talking. Tell me your story, Hvenda. How did you end up here?”

Obar shrugs. “If you’re hoping for some crazy tale of my exile, I’m afraid I don’t have one. It all was pretty, uh, prosaic. I got some money by the time I was twenty-eight, I guess. And I decided to just, you know, see the Galaxy. I followed the music...”

“Music?”

“The music in my heart, brother! I went whenever it led me.”

“And it led you here.”

“I suppose it did.”

Alnam laughs. “You don’t look -- please don’t take offense -- you don’t look like this music nomad to me.”

“Yeah, well,” the Nautolan points at his room with a wide swipe of his arm, “this doesn’t give the right vibe, I agree. But I fell in love with Skados. With Cattesians. And I dispensed with my spaceship and made my dwelling here.”

Alnam throws back his head. “So you’re a xeno-, what’s it called, a xenophile?”

“For me, Skados isn’t exactly xeno.”

The prospect of going native suddenly seems very appealing. Alnam’s even surprised he hasn’t thought about it earlier. Some part of his consciousness knows it’s the spirits talking, but the séance roars over it.


	10. Krev Devin V

His hands are shaking in the morning. Bad sign.

Krev hasn’t taken any in more than a week. He calls it “being highly functional”.

But a day or two more, and he’ll be in no shape for motivational speeches to his reflection. He’ll be in no shape for anything other than being a wicked, aggressive beast covered in cold sweat.

Sometimes, his “I’m highly functional” shtick has a second part: “I can quit this shit any time I want”.

Today, Krev doesn’t feel like lying.

It’s time to call the Dug. Krev knows it is, but he tries to postpone it. Thinking usually helps -- at this stage. The beast to come does no thinking.

Does Alnam know about his addiction? He seems to know everything there is to know about Krev. Krev has to take extreme precautions to leave the old man in the dark at least on something. So he must know about Krev’s relationship with the Big G.

It feels shameful, somehow.

It feels insulting.

Maybe Alnam should start paying his glitterstim bills.

Krev tries to take his mind off glitterstim, but it just finds its way back. Nuna-ball doesn’t help. Jatz doesn’t help. It’s time to call the Dug.

Gzulla always picks up after the second tone.

“Yes?”

“It’s me. I wanna make a bet.”

“How large?”

Krev thinks. “Let’s say four.”

“Okay. Today’s game?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. Come to the Forest in half an hour. Can do or no can do?”

“I’ll be there.”

The Forest is a large mall twenty blocks away from Krev’s apartment. A park takes up its first two levels -- with real trees and rocks and even a stream. People on Telos like to feel like they aren’t on Telos.

Krev makes it in thirty-three standard minutes. It’s weekend, and the parking lot is all busy. Some idiot can’t find his way out of it, and Krev wastes two minutes waiting for him to free the space.

When your hands shake as much as his do now, two minutes is an eternity.

The Dugs reside on the seventh floor, above the nightclub and the ice rink. Gzulla’s son-in-law owns the main attraction of the level seven: a meat market. Got turbolifts going to the garage level. Gzulla’s son-in-law says meat gets to his shop from spaceports in less than an hour. Other relatives of Gzulla hold tailor shops, holophoto shops, laundries, barber shops, and even a book store.

Gzulla’s is a betting firm.

Everything is perfectly legit: Gzulla’s got all permissions. You can actually make a bet at his shop.

Gzulla’s always ready to laugh about that.

“I’ll be damned if it’s not my favorite Kesselman!” Gzulla greets Krev. “ _Dakle,_ Devin!”

“How are your okays?”

Gzulla laughs. Krev hides his hands in his pockets.

The betting store is tight: you got two holoscreens for odds and two for games, a sofa, and a water cooler. Gzulla spends his days on the sofa. His two daughters work shifts behind an armored window in a separate room. You can only get there through a labyrinth of Dug-infested corridors.

“Wanna get a piece of homeland, Devin?”

“You know better than me what I want.”

“That’s true, that’s true. Well, make your bet, then.”

Krev pays eight hundred credits -- he really needs to start multiplying his twelve key ASAP -- to Gzulla’s daughter. When the metal box under the window opens, no Dug stays inside the shop. Gzulla’s quickness never ceases to amaze Krev.

He takes the piece of flimsiplast out of the box. His fingers feel through the plast: four ampules. Gzulla has a long history as a supplier, but Krev still counts the ampules multiple times.

The Dug returns inside no sooner than the package goes inside Krev’s pocket.

“Want a sandwich?” he asks Krev, presenting said sandwich to him with one of his feet-hands.

“No, I’m good.”

“Yes? You look anything but good. You have to eat more, my boy.”

As he looks at the ribbons of meat stretching from the Dug’s hand to his mouth, Krev feels nauseous. His taking burns his thigh where it lies in his pocket.

That’s enough of small talk.

“Come again!” Gzulla shouts in his back.

On the way home, pride rears its head. Did you really have to?

Krev thinks so.

But didn’t he abstain from glitter back on Manaan? Not an injection in more than a year. Was doing fine. Did almost none of the shit on Atnakis -- but that was mainly because it was in short supply there. Didn’t feel too bad, either. On Coruscant, he wasn’t clean -- but that was weaker stuff almost exclusively. Had to smoke some or put some under his tongue once in a while. Was mingling with the elites sometimes then. Still, barely any G.

But it was different back then. He was still somebody -- not Krev Devin’s corpse floating down the stream of time. Still got future.

What about now? He’s turning thirty-nine in a month. Not exactly the end of life -- unless your life ended eight years ago.

Krev thinks about Coruscant again. He’s going there, he tells himself. He’s going back. Now, though, the plan doesn’t sound so good. It sounds like it has a million holes in it -- so many that Krev can’t focus on one.

What if Alnam finds him? Or the Ixtlaris? It can happen. No planet is safe for a man who’s fucked up as big-time as you. Especially if said man is a spicehead.

What’s he going to do on Coruscant? Let’s not lie to ourselves: he’s not making enough money to sustain him until his life runs out no matter what he does for Alnam. He can make some, sure. Some starting capital.

Starting capital is worth jack all if you’ve got jack all to start.

After he stings himself, doubts retreat. Krev becomes the nicest Krev the Galaxy has seen. The Galaxy holds her breath -- she knows the regular Krev will be coming back.

He does, and when he does, he picks up his jacket and goes to his speeder again.

The bite-mark on his elbow burns a little as he’s driving. So does the frame of his vision. His hands don’t shake no more, though. A major improvement.

The abandoned factory complex is the church to Vygo Alnam -- there, his presence is felt, but he does not live there. It doesn’t see much traffic these days: only women from a better society marooned on a dead planet, demonmen, and scheming stim addicts.

You can’t tell from the outside that a heart is still beating within this place of worship. Krev knows it does -- he’s one of the acolytes.

No one’s in today. He overshoots and goes down two storeys too many. Only notices that when there remain no more working lamps above his head.

Alnam doesn’t respond the first time Krev calls. It’s okay. Krev waits. Glitterstim has made him patient.

He calls again in ten or fifteen minutes, and Alnam picks up. Now Krev notices there’s a delay between the call coming through and the image of Alnam appearing.

Vygo Alnam is a cautious son of a bitch.

“What brings you to me, Mr. Devin?”

The holo-relay buzzes, strained. Maintaining a line this secure must take a toll on the hardware.

“Just calling to say hi.” Keep up the image of a dashing mercenary. Ladies used to like this trick -- well, until Krev’s face started showing what he really was.

“In a good mood today, aren’t we, Mr. Devin?”

The old man sounds less bothered himself than he did the last time, though.

“Yep, and I’ve got a thing or two to show for it.”

Alnam raises his eyebrows.

He says nothing, so Krev continues: “I looked into that ConCare thing you mentioned.”

“And? What did you find out?”

Alnam looks like a magician who’s about to witness his apprentice do his trademark trick for the first time. Krev goes with it. As long as it pays.

“A very peculiar firm, ConCare.”

“How so?”

“Well, at first, I thought the sole purpose of its existence was to do the heavy lifting for BioTech, since it’s in the Outer Rim and exempt from taxes. But then, I checked Brate’s notes and guess what? The poor bastard mentioned ConCare as well. You’d think a clone deserter wouldn’t care about a dog-eat-dog market, would you?”

Alnam says nothing -- just peers into Krev’s brain.

“Anyway, I read more of what he had to offer, and an interesting picture began to present itself. Apparently, there was this phenomenon on Geonosis during the second battle thereof called the ConCare boys. And the ConCare boys, if you’re willing to imagine, were clone troopers who had gone through ConCare. What Brate writes about them is that they were something like brain-dead. Not brain-dead in the sense they were vegetables, no, but in the sense they only did what clones are supposed to do: shoot and kill and obey orders. None of those desertion, whistleblowing, secret diary shenanigans.” Surprisingly, Krev’s amused telling all this to Alnam. It’s like he’s back in school on Kessel, reciting his homework.

Always feels good to recite to a grateful audience.

“I asked myself how that was possible. So I looked into it. Wanna guess where I find the info?”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“No? Alright. On the ConCare site. You know, on the Holonet.”

Old man Alnam’s laugh sounds like a cry of some alien scavenger bird. “Never underestimate the extent the sentients are willing to go to to avoid the necessity of thinking!”

“To be fair, I had to dig into it quite a bit to find the info. Like, I spent maybe two hours.”

Alnam laughs again. “This is their weak spot. Everyone’s, if I’m being precise. Their sloppiness. Please continue, Mr. Devin.”

“As I said, I found the info on their site. Turns out, ConCare is big into lobotomy. They even had a government grant from the Republic about four years ago for research in that field. Well, lobotomy is--”

Alnam raises his hand: “I know what it is. So what is your conclusion?”

“They were testing that shit on clones. Well, some of them. The way I see it, they probably thought themselves real humane, letting the test subjects live after the experiments and all.”

“It was a part of the experiment,” says Alnam. “How they socially adapt after the surgery. How proficient they are and how self-sustaining. They wanted to make better droids to fight droids.”

“So our conclusions match, Mr. Alnam.”

“So they do.”

“Well, fancy me this, then,” says Krev as the drug races through his system like substitute anger, “the grant was granted four years ago. Which puts it before the war. Can’t say I ever bought into the story of the miraculous discovery of the clone army just when the Republic needed it, but whom did they say they were performing lobotomy tests prior to said discovery? Sentients?”

“It was always sentients, Mr. Devin. It was always sentients regardless of the womb that had begotten them.”

“Were there any born of a real one?”

“What does it matter? Cruelty is cruelty. We have laws that protect animals from mistreatment, but we send sentients to fight and die for our order. The only thing worse than this is how quiescent we are about it.”

Alnam pauses. “You are right to ask about non-clones, however -- even though for a wrong reason. Your own xenophobia moves you, whereas you should think about the others’ xenophobia.”

“Whose?”

“The people our message will target. The people of the Republic. If you tell them how clones who went through lobotomy became more efficient in combat, they’re going to cheer.”

“Then we need some sentient victims.”

“Do you think they just let their victims walk?”

“Social adaptation? You said it yourself.”

Alnam shakes his head. “It’s one thing to send them to a war and another to let them back to their homes. No. They used prisoners, most likely.” He smirks. “I know that’s what I would have done had I lost all of my integrity.”

Or just did, Krev thinks. After all, Alnam knows all this -- somehow.

“So what do we do?”

“We act smart is what we do.”

That’d be new for Krev.

“We spread the data through the right channel,” the old man continues. “Nobody in the Republic is going to care if we present your findings as evil or immoral. That’s how low we’ve stooped. But our goal is to inspire rejection and discontent, not this low-brow patriotism, and we must account for the reality. Have you heard of the Shadowfeed, Mr. Devin?”

“CIS broadcasts? Sure.”

“Not just broadcasts. It’s more of a different dimension of the Holonet, if you will. Broadcasts, news, forums for CIS supporters. Not only for them, though: it is monitored by several Republic security agencies and a great many patriots of the Republic.”

“Not sure I’m following.”

“Oh, Mr. Devin, don’t you think there’s nothing quite as exciting as arguing with your enemy on his grounds? Bringing evidence of his stupidity back to your home base to share it with your comrades?” Seeing Krev’s still not following, Alnam says, “Maybe it’s masochism. Maybe they mistake the pleasure they get from it for sadistic, I cannot hope to say for sure. Or maybe it’s the forbidden nature of following Shadowfeed discussions that draws the patriots in. In any case, whatever scandalous information gets posted there ends up on the Holonet as well.

“Now if you were to leak the ConCare data on the Shadowfeed, it would take a completely different turn. The Separatist sympathizers would brandish it as a showcase of the Republic’s great inefficiency and cruelty -- forgetting, of course, their own treatment of droids. And the first reaction of the Republic patriots who stumble upon those discussions would be to prove it false -- which they won’t be able to do, because it is actually true. And then the story becomes not something to be silently proud of, but a thing of shame.”

“Just because it is first brought up by the enemy?”

“Exactly.”

“You mentioned security agencies that watch over the Shadowfeed. This gives me a bad vibe, Mr. Alnam.”

“What did you expect?” laughs Alnam. “We’re working on a huge project. Of course it will bring the attention of the guards of the regime.”

“I want a secure line for posting,” says Krev. “As you know, I’ve already got a bunch of people on my back. I’d rather security bureaus stayed away from it.”

“This building will be off-limits for this kind of operation. I don’t want to call one day and be greeted by an RDS operative.”

“Then think about another building. Just so you know, if they start cutting my balls off, I’m gonna squeal.”

“You will be thinking about another building, Mr. Devin. You know the world of Telos IV much better than I can ever hope to.”

“And you have much more money than I can ever hope to.”

“Don’t worry about it. Do you know you have been trading in Mon Cal paintings and amassed, dare I say, quite a fortune?”

Krev half-coughs, half-laughs. “What now?”

“A respectable source of income, as far as the tax services are concerned. You have an account at the Bank of the Core, though I’m afraid you aren’t at liberty to access it whenever you see fit. Instead, I will give you one-time codes for opening it when a need presents itself.”

Smart, Krev thinks, but not fool-proof. Not Krev-proof, either.

“Okay, I can buy a building. After the war started, there’s plenty of unused real estate here. Nobody’s going to bat an eye if I use some of it. But let’s go back to the secure connection.”

“Sorval will help you with it.”

“Sorval? That dickhead? I thought you kept him around for tearing people’s heads off, not for fixing your Holonet.”

“Aren’t looks deceiving, Mr. Devin?”

“Getting thrown off the stairs isn’t.”

Krev knows what this is all about: it’s about having a demonman babysit him. So that Krev doesn’t do anything stupid, like take all the money from the account and run off-world.

But that’s fine -- Krev has a goal. A large, shiny, coruscant goal. Hard to miss.

The demonman is but an obstacle. A large obstacle -- also hard to miss.

“Where do I find him?”

“Ask Fadrina.”

“He’s not here?”

“It’s best not to draw attention to this place. Too much traffic is going to raise some suspicions.”

“Not on Telos IV it isn’t.”

“Fadrina gave you her contacts, didn’t she?”

Krev nods. “Okay. I buy a building, I get your horned servant to establish the connection. Then what?”

“Then we start spreading the information, Mr. Devin.”

“‘We’ as in...”

“As in you and whomever you hire. Don’t go with too many people. Two or three are more than enough.”

“The fewer know, the better, am I right?”

“Absolutely. And the fewer know about my involvement, the safer you are, Mr. Devin. We are both interested in keeping that number as low as possible.”

Alnam strokes his beard. “Let them start discussions on Shadowfeed forums. Don’t overdo it, but keep at least a few going at any given time. Make sure to mask your points of entry. Sorval will teach you all the technicalities.”

Krev mulls everything over for a while. Then he asks, “Why don’t you let Sorval or Fadrina be in charge?”

“I don’t trust them with the data I trust you with. You’ve seen Brate’s files.”

“Why?”

“Fadrina is too easy to compromise, being a Republic official. Her role is different. Sorval... Sorval is just an impressionable young man. He’s much too willing to die for the cause to be put on the point. You, Mr. Devin, you, on the other hand, have something to lose. You know how to save your skin. Your caution will be useful in this operation.”

Alnam makes it sound like mockery and not at the same time. He’s not wrong, though.

“Our angle should be that the Republic is incompetent and needlessly cruel,” says Alnam.

“So incompetent as to lose track of what I assume is billions of credits of taxes unpaid by the companies outsourcing to the Outer Rim?”

“You can mention it, but keep the main argument simple: they lobotomize some of the clone troopers. Emphasize ‘some’: otherwise, it’ll be too easy for the Republic Holonet warriors to dismiss the whole story.”

Krev tries it another way. “Maybe I should work with Brate’s documents for a while longer? I feel like there’s still something I can learn from them. He keeps mentioning these engineers from Forakk...”

Alnam regains control of his face muscles so quickly he deserves a damn award for it. “Do you think some engineers are going to sound inspiring to the CIS sympathizers? Or tax evasion, for that matter? Stick with the plan, Mr. Devin.”

I’ll stick with a few, Krev thinks.

He calls Fadrina from his airspeeder -- a few blocks away from the abandoned factory.

“I’ll tell him to meet you at the sauna in Coruscant City. You know where that is?”

Krev does: it used to be Sumar’s favorite spot for hanging out before a pool opened at his high-rise.

“I can get there at around eight.”

“I’ll tell him.” The junior rep falls silent. Then she adds, “Don’t hold a grudge against Sorval. He’s a hothead -- it’s just how he is. When... before our first encounter with you, he hated our mutual friend. Now he hates you. It’s just how he is.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Look, there’s something else I need to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“Not over the comlink. Let’s meet up at _The Herder_ at ten.”

“If your friend doesn’t murder me, then sure.”

He thinks about it on his way to the sauna. What does she want from him? A replacement for her clone lover, if we stick with that theory? She’ll probably gonna get disappointed, if so: Krev isn’t even sure he functions that way anymore. Gets his hard-on every morning, but that’s about it.

The sauna is empty save for a family of Ithorians taking up the cold pool. The towel Krev’s given is slightly, unclearly moist. The air smells of fungus.

The Devaronian is waiting for him in one of the niches surrounding the hot-water pool. Got himself a nice weeping bottle of beer. One glass.

No blaster in sight. The demonman: only wears a towel around his waist. Good. What danger from a naked foe?

The demonman reminds him what. “How’re your ribs, old man? I guess I might have broken a few.”

“Want to beat an old man again?”

“Any time you want.”

“That’ll have to wait.” Krev sits down at another steamer chair. Sitting idly doesn’t sit well with him: he really, really wants to go for the round two with the Devaronian. He knows it’s a stupid idea, but the Big G spurs him into action.

“I heard you are some tech wanker,” he says picking the bottle up.

The Devaronian’s eyes narrow as Krev takes a sip of beer. In a second, though, the red fucker’s smiling.

“Yeah, I am. Can you imagine that? Having a skillset? Being employable? Sounds like a fairytale, right?”

“Great. Your wankery is needed. Your boss’ orders.”

Sorval the demonman wipes his lips. “Uh-huh, Fadrina mentioned it. So what’s what?”

Krev explains.

“So what do you want me to do?” the Devaronian asks. “Buy the building or whatever first. Do I look like I can set up a com line in a building that doesn’t exist?”

“I want you to show some enthusiasm. It’s your boss you’re trying to please, not me. Keep it in mind. The place won’t take me long. When the deal’s done, I want you to start putting the line up at once. So start buying all the equipment you’ll need.”

“Start paying me, and I’ll start buying shit, grandpa.”

Krev smiles. “I’m not the one who pays for shit in this little gig of ours.”

The morning and its shaking hands seem like they happened a lifetime ago when Krev arrives at Aul Sebbata’s. When Krev’s high, he’s high, and tonight, he’s real high. This is the best time -- glitterstim has stopped burning inside of him, but the euphoria is still there.

It’s dark tonight in _The Lonely Herder._ A band is performing instead of a lonely drummer.

Fadrina is waiting for him. Got a cocktail in front of her -- just one. Seems a recurrent trend.

Krev lights up a cigarette. “What’s kicking?”

“We have a problem. Well, I do. And so do you.”

It doesn’t distress Krev. Not tonight. “You don’t say. I wasn’t expecting that.”

The junior representative twirls a cigarette in her fingers. Decides to put it away. “It’s Skumaki.”

“A what now?”

“Skumaki. The senior rep. My boss. They’re calling him back to Coruscant.”

“And you are to take his place?”

“No. The entire mission is being replaced.”

“You either fucked up or made it big. Which is it?”

She takes the cigarette out of the pack again. “Another junior representative apparently was digging into Skumaki. She got proof he’s involved with his secretary.”

“Oh no.”

“Leave your sarcasm. The Senatorial Commission on Professional Integrity has been very heavy-handed lately. You know, with all the protests against corruption and nepotism... So Skumaki will be tried on Coruscant -- at a closed hearing, of course -- and then sent to another planet to represent the Republic.”

“You mean it all is just a slap on the wrist?”

“Yes and no. The apparatus is going to give him a good chewing, as is his wife, I’d wager. But they can’t admit he screwed up, can they? That would mean that the protesters have a point.”

“Well, that’s all very interesting, but I don’t see how it affects me beyond the fact I’m not going to see you again. Tragic, I know.”

Fadrina looks at him with a suspicion. Maybe she’s wondering if he’s high.

“Brate’s body is kept at the Republic embassy.”

“You gotta be shitting me.”

“I wish I was, Mr. Devin. Krev.”

“What, does it, uh, does it just fucking lie there in the... in your office?”

“It’s in the morgue.”

“There’s a morgue in the embassy?”

“The Republic doesn’t want any meddling from the locals in case a representative dies on duty. There are morgues or freezing chambers at almost every embassy.”

Sometimes, Krev questions why he even takes glitter if shit like this happens without it.

“How...” he starts. His blood’s boiling -- he hoped the clone wouldn’t make any more problems for him -- but he also is trying not to laugh. Trying hard. “How did you even sneak it in there?”

“With Sorval’s help,” says Fadrina. “The same way you’re going to extract it.”


	11. Vad Alnam VI

“For free Skados. For Skados independent of both the Republic and the CIS,” finishes the droid.

The broadcast is over.

“What do you think?” Alnam asks.

The Ithorian sighs. “We’re chasing after somebody with the political savvy of a teenager. I feel bad, Vad.”

He smiles -- though there’s little to smile over. “Yeah. The speech may be rousing, but... Who’s going to go and take government buildings by force after listening to it?”

“We’ll end up arresting a dozen Cattesians who aren’t of age, and that will go all over the Holonet, I’m calling it now.”

“Think the Senator will cover up for us?”

Mtoro harrumphs. “And also pay us a fortune for our outstanding work while he’s at it. Where do you plan to spend your unexpected retirement?”

“How did Dibasi even end up helping Ktii? I don’t get the impression the woman’s popular with anyone.”

“Dibasi is doing what he thinks can raise him in the hierarchy. Nobody here likes Ktii, but maybe the Senate sees some use in her.”

“Or -- more likely -- it’s his idea of what hard work should look like. He can put some wonderful reports proving he’s doing something while we’re here.”

Alnam takes a sit. His hotel suite is painted green. He misses the greyness of Coruscant. “Look, the Commission is meeting in two days. We haven’t found anything yet. I’m afraid the Senator is going to be disappointed with us. Maybe he’ll even take us off this case.”

“No. He understands perfectly well his deadlines don’t mean anything. He can come off as very full of himself, but he’s not a complete idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me. So what are we going to do? Just sit around here indefinitely? I fail to imagine any way the local law enforcement will change its tune and help us.”

Mtoro looks out the window, her hands behind her back. “I still can’t get over how the studio isn’t involved. If it was, we’d be on our way home now.”

“Gotta write that report for why you wasted your nano-droids, huh?” Alnam stands up. Walks closer to her. The Ithorian’s frame blocks most of the view, and he can only see a large sign in Cattesian outside. “Don’t sweat it. Put them on me, if you want. Say it was my idea and I wouldn’t stop bothering you until you showed me how they work.”

She laughs. “I’ll write you made me do it at gunpoint.” Drumming her fingers on her hip, she adds, “Maybe you were right. Maybe the cops just called the studio. Maybe they called Fozatta directly, who knows.”

“At least we know the chief doesn’t want to get up close and personal when doing his dirty laundry.”

The spy droids reported no one entering the studio building this day or previous one -- not even Giles himself. The moron must be sleeping at his work couch.

“Problem is, we don’t know if he has any.”

Alnam scratches his nose. “Well, seems like it’s the time for us to do the usual cop routine.”

“What would that be?”

“Covering our asses, Agent Apani. We gotta show the big man we did everything we could.” He looks at the droid. “Besides, since the Rep Administration was kind enough to provide us with a translator unit...”

Mtoro looks at him. Says nothing.

Alnam explains: “Let’s go fraternize with the common people of Skados, shall we? Who says we can’t find twenty patriots among the honest workers?”

“I doubt the Senator is going to be impressed.”

“He may not. But the coppers may finally betray themselves if they see us mingling with people not on their payroll.”

Mtoro’s growl starts high and goes low, low, low. By now, Alnam can tell it’s an Ithorian thoughtful nod.

“I’ll admit I want to work this cop connection through,” Mtoro says. “My gut’s telling me there is something to it. But we shouldn’t focus on one lead too much. From experience -- that’s detrimental more often than not.”

“Come on, it’s going to be fun. It’s not like we have a ton of leads anyway. And one more thing: can I have a capsule of these nano-droids?”

.

.

.

Workers spend Benduday mornings the same way they spend other four days’ evenings. They hit pubs and sports games. They drink and they bet.

And they discuss news.

The industrial area of Skados City is downed in a giant basin about forty miles away from the habitable districts. Its enormous pipes can be seen from the city proper. Its fumes can be seen from the low orbit.

Some life takes shelter at the factories’ feet. A carcass large as a Coruscant apartment building put on its side takes all the space between various industrial complexes. Visual hum of a force field stuck between the metal lines of the carcass. That’s the only way anyone going so close to the factories can not cough his lungs out in a year’s time.

That’s where workers spend their Benduday mornings.

Alnam is surprised: they managed to recreate the lower levels of Coruscant on a mostly green planet. The similarity is uncanny, and he’s sure he could find a lot of suspiciously polite and careful drivers around these parts.

“Why would anyone choose to hang out here?” Mtoro says as the cab they came in leaves the platform. “They have an entire planet to go to. There are so many interesting sites in the city. But they still go here on their weekends. I don’t understand it.”

Indeed: varied crowds of Cattesians go by. Almost no empty spots on parking lots.

“Maybe they just love their job so much,” Alnam says. “Or they hate their wives this much.”

“Do you know why?” Mtoro asks their droid.

4-3PO is just glad he’s out of the box again: the administration official Alnam and Mtoro spoke to had kept him deactivated most of the time. “I can understand what they’re saying just fine,” that Ansionian woman told them, “so I don’t need the damn thing. I have to pay for his maintenance from my own pocket, too, so be careful with him.”

“The cheaper prices for alcoholic drinks and other forms of entertainment would be my guess,” the droid says. “I should remind you, Agents, that this neighborhood is considered not completely safe for visitors of Skados City.”

“So if the factories paid more to their workers, nobody would even listen to Povo Rapol,” Mtoro sighs. “What the Senate should’ve done was send a negotiation team to deal with the management. This is where ammo for our armies is made, and the workers have to save on drinks.”

“Wouldn’t that be bribing them?” says Alnam.

“What, paying them more? Do you take your wages as a bribe as well?”

“I’m not planning to secede from the Republic, you know. These guys have a problem with the central government, and your suggestion is to raise their pay. So you take an economic approach to a political issue. In other words, bribing.”

“So what’s your solution?”

Alnam shrugs. “You’re veering dangerously close to my father’s rhetoric.” He is unsure if he should continue, but he does anyway. “He was always fond of saying raise the wages this and raise the taxes that. Well, unless it concerned his company, of course. I’m sorry, I’m sure you don’t mean it like that. It just gets on my nerves.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I reminded you of your father,” the Ithorian says. The next moment she turns with her whole body to Alnam. It must count as subtle for Ithorians.

“Vad...”

“It’s okay. My father is who he is. I’ve got used to it.”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t be saying what you’re saying now. It’s fine. Really. He’s not a bad man, my father. I can talk about him. Let’s just not do it now. We have some work ahead of us.”

He wonders if him saying this about Father would be noted by his higher-ups. How much of sonly love is allowed? How much if your father is socially irresponsible?

And no less importantly: does Mtoro report his outbursts?

They question the idle workers. Alnam makes sure 4-3PO tells every last one they are with the RDS -- if they want to make the cops do something stupid, they have to do stupid as well.

The droid works his freedom off. Doesn’t waste Alnam’s time on he-says’ and she-says’. He doesn’t wait for the Cattesians to finish before he starts translating. His voice is loud enough to get to Alnam over all the screams and mechanical noise of the district and low enough not to drown the interviewees’ voices. After the third or the fourth group of workers, Alnam doesn’t even have to repeat his greetings again: the droid salutes the birdpeople all on his own.

The birdpeople:

“Are you kidding? Povo Rapol is a poser. I dunno who constantly puts him on a pedestal.”

“I don’t care for his songs. But what he says on his program is good stuff. It’s what we all feel. You should tell so to your bosses!”

“We don’t talk to your kind here. I don’t care! Call me to your station, if you like.”

“Don’t listen if they tell you he doesn’t deserve his fame. They just can’t accept that he’s just as good as Avgli was. It’s because he’s new. He lives right now, okay? You’ll see, come visit Skados in twenty years, and you’ll see -- the same people will swear by him. He just needs to die first. Then they’ll see him for what he was.”

“Nah, it’s all shit. Avgli was a real poet. This one? Nah. It’s just young girls who love him.”

“What broadcast? I don’t know of any broadcast. Do you?”

“Fuck you, pigs! You’re no authority here!”

“I just listen to the songs. It’s irrelevant what he says. If he wants me to listen to his opinions, he has to make them into songs.”

“That faggot? Yeah, he called us all to strike last year. And what? Fuckers on Coruscant still implemented their droid plan. Fuck the lot of them!”

“Povo Rapol’s probably got more money than all of us combined. I’ll listen to him when he shares with us!”

“I don’t know. My mom listens to him. He’s alright, I guess. But I don’t really know about any broadcasts.”

“What, interested in our culture? Come and see the shit we work knee-deep in! No rich kid will sing about that, that’s for sure.”

Alnam questions those spiteful of Rapol further.

“Where do you figure he records his addresses?”

“How would I know? On Coruscant, probably. The fucker’s got property there, I heard.”

“No idea at all? There must be some talk in the streets.”

“There ain’t none. You don’t think Povo Rapol tells us what he does and when, do you?”

Or: “I don’t care where he does that from. I don’t care about him at all.”

Or: “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you guys. No offense -- I’m just not a snitch.”

“But you don’t like him. I didn’t get the impression you liked him.”

“He can go burn, for all I care. But I’m no snitch.”

Alnam mentions _Fozatta Records_ as much as he can get away with. Nobody knows anything -- but some may remember it if the cops question them.

Make it when: Alnam’s sure Captain Aloii is on the case.

Seen his boys twice now after going back to the hotel from Obar. Perks of being a detective who might require an intervention before he turns forty: you get to see stuff good, teetotaler agents don’t. Drove past him yesterday in their long speeder after he’d looked at it for a minute. Really tore off seeing he’d noticed them.

Alnam tries not to get ahead of himself. It’s like that: when a lead or theory is reeeeeal sweet, you can’t let go of it.

But this time, he’s pretty sure the police are on it. Even drunk, he can tell a tracking vehicle.

And the vehicle he saw -- it reeked of incompetence only a nowhere-planet police force can exhibit.

He puts a lot of faith in their incompetence.

They spend most of the day in the shadow of the factories. When they head back to the city, 4-3PO says, “It really was a pleasure to be of assistance to you, Agents. I hope our cooperation will continue. I know a few more districts tourists are not advised to visit.”

.

.

.

“The Commission meets tomorrow.” Senator Dibasi’s hologram is fuzzy. The sound is clear, though. Alnam would like to make that reverse. “Do you have any good news, Agents?”

“You have to understand, sir,” says Mtoro, “that our work takes time. We would have been of more help had we arrived at Skados well in advance of the Commission gathering.”

Dibasi rubs his eyes. “But do you have anything I could report as a success? Don’t hold back, Agent Apani. Let it be a moderate one.”

“Well... we’re going through the procedures we deem necessary. Plus, we’ve conducted a survey of the local working population that shows Povo Rapol isn’t particularly popular with them. Agent Alnam and I don’t think there will be any, if we can put it roughly, crisis if that individual is apprehended.”

“How about we do not put it roughly? You have to understand me too, Agents: tomorrow I will be speaking in front of the distinguished members of the Commission. Vice-chancellor himself will be present. The last thing I want to do is put anything roughly with that crowd.”

The senator smiles. With the image quality like this, his smile seems a distortion.

“We understand it, sir. The investigation is going full-force. We have determined several leads that we are working on now. The most promising one is Giburin Fozatta. We suspect he can be providing his studio equipment to Povo Rapol... and whoever is behind Povo Rapol.”

“Fozatta? The music records guy?”

“This is correct.”

“Oh. I’m not sure I should bring him up at the meeting. He has some friends in the Senate. Unless you are one hundred percent sure he’s involved, and I mean consciously and willingly involved, let’s not put his name on any lists.”

“You are right, sir. To bring him up would be counterproductive if he has friends in the upper echelons. Our colleagues on Coruscant have trouble scheduling an appointment with him as it is.”

If Alnam was Mtoro, he wouldn’t draw the senator’s attention to this.

Dibasi nods. “Very well, then. Keep working on that lead and all the others. But is there anything I can bring up at the meeting? Anything positive?”

“Our proposition would be to mention that the locals do not take Povo Rapol’s addresses too seriously. They think of him--” Mtoro looks at Alnam.

“They think of him as unqualified to speak on the topics he’s speaking on. His image as a singer does not help his cause. It’s a double-edged sword, really.”

“Exactly. As my partner says, his fame doesn’t help him to garner a lot of support or sympathy. We should be happy they didn’t put the same money into promoting an actual factory worker. Povo Rapol may be from a simple family, but his opulence has long divorced him from most Cattesians.”

The senator’s face -- even covered with a veil of static -- betrays just what he thinks about this.

Mtoro must have noticed that, too. “While it may not sound like much, sir, please keep in mind that we have only been deployed on Skados for four days. We are making steady progress. And part of the reason why you cannot present more to the Commission is that to tell about some leads we have could be later called libel, as we do not yet have evidence to prove those leads’ relevance.”

“I hear you, Agents, I hear you. Well then. Keep on digging -- and don’t hesitate to call me any time when you get something meaty.”

He disconnects. Alnam gives his eyes some rest after ten minutes of staring at holographic jumble.

“The senator probably made some promises on our behalf,” he says. “Now he’ll have to apologize -- also on our behalf. Tough work being a senator.”

“He’ll be fine. He is a senator, after all. This won’t be his first time breaking a promise.”

Alnam laughs, but his stomach is clenched tight. He has another call to make.

.

.

.

Ormi picks up this time. Good -- the sooner he’s done with it, the better.

“How did your exhibit go?” he asks.

“All things considered, it wasn’t too shabby. No fights -- that’s an upgrade from the last time.”

“Oh yeah, I remember. What did they fight over, the use of Mon Cal aquamarine?”

“Yeah.”

Her laugh is nervous. Tends to be lately when she’s talking to him.

And now -- maybe -- she’s got a reason for that.

It hasn’t been comfortable talking to his wife in a long time. Add the fact: he plans to backstab her now.

It’s not like that, he thinks. He knows, though: for her, it is.

“How’s Yalgi?” he asks. How false his voice sounds surprises him.

“Everything’s fine. He’s making plans for his birthday already. Will you--”

“Can’t promise anything -- you know that. So far, I’m stuck in the Mid Rim and I don’t know when the investigation is going to be concluded.”

“I understand all that, but... maybe you could do something about that? Like a day off?”

“I wish I could. It’s a four-day trip from here to Coruscant.”

“Oh, right. I tend to forget how large space is. Don’t really remember the last time I’ve been off-world.”

Alnam does: four years ago, Bacrana. Their last family vacation.

“Well, come work for the RDS if you want to go to other planets. How does Skados VI sound? We’ve got wonderful factory pipes bigger than the building you live in!”

Again this nervous laughter. “I think I’ll sit this one out. So about the party...”

“As I said, no promises if I’ll be able to come. I hope we’ll close the case by then. But even if we don’t, I’m going to be present by a holoconnection. I can say that much. I told Yalgi already. I’ll be there the entire time, that’s... that’s, yeah.”

She presses her lips together. “Look, Vad... if you think... I don’t want you to think I don’t want to see you anymore. Because I do. Things may have not worked out between us, but you’re a good man.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, I mean it. You’re a genuinely good man, and I’d like to think we can still talk to each other.”

“Of course we can. You need anything -- you call me. I mean, if you just need to talk, you call me. It’s... it’s...”

“And Yalgi, he needs you. You know, my greatest fear is that I’m standing between you two. That I’m taking him away from you.”

“No, you’re not. You are really not.” Alnam feels like shit saying this. There’s this fucking trembling somewhere deep in his chest -- it’s like he’s turning into an Ithorian. “It’s all good. Don’t do that to yourself. Everything is good, I promise.”

Ormi looks down -- Alnam knows it means she’s thinking real hard. Then she says, “And about your father... Do you know if he’s going to send Yalgi a gift this year?”

“I don’t,” says Alnam, no tender sadness left in him now. “I don’t talk to him.”

“Because the last time...”

“Yeah, I know. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I just don’t want to feel indebted to him and I don’t want Yalgi to feel that way. And with gifts like that...”

“I heard you. There’s nothing I can do about it. He doesn’t consult me before he does anything. Even if I called him, he’d do things his own way.”

She glances at him. “Okay. Let’s leave it at that.”

.

.

.

Alnam can’t sleep that night. Alnam can’t believe she said what she said just to get him go bowing to his father.

But maybe she really thinks that way, some part of him suggests.

A shit suggestion, Alnam tells that part. She just wanted to placate me. Just chose the lesser of two Alnams.

She’s always tended to jump from one topic to another.

She has, Alnam admits, so what?

He can’t sleep that night: he’s forging his justifications.

He still feels like shit.

.

.

.

Next day results: nothing.

They pay another visit to _Fozatta Records._ It’s still the domain of Giles. Giles is still as unhelpful as only a well-stocked junkie can be.

They file an official request with the Skados City Police -- for the second time.

Planetary police force: the only entity in the Republic that is able of being less cooperative than a well-stocked junkie.

Nobody on Coruscant has managed to get a hold of Fozatta or Povo Rapol. Alnam’s suspicion: nobody really tried to.

The case looks more and more like a way to get him off Coruscant.

He tells himself that’s absurd. Nobody cares about him -- he’s nobody. The only person in the Galaxy who gives a shit where Vad Alnam is is ten years old.

Mtoro, though? She could do something to piss the RDS direction off. So they sent her away -- with Alnam as collateral damage.

He thinks about it. The Ithorian has her own opinions on just about everything. Not a rebellious kind, however. She may grumble all she wants but she’ll still go and do her duty.

Nah, the notion is absurd. But so is their assignment.

.

.

.

He gets shit-faced that night with Obar again. So shit-faced he can barely stand as airspeeders flash by him.

He feels oooooooold. He feels like there’s nothing to do. The only thing he wants is to go back to Coruscant.

While he’s not on Coruscant, that passes for a goal.

He falls, hitting his brow. The sound comes a second later, with the heat wave: a low-frequency reverb of a speeder’s engine.

That’s it. It’s over. He’s killed in a traffic accident on Skados VI.

Great fate.

But the world doesn’t hurry to fade to black. No, instead his head hurts like a bitch, and his forearms start bitching too: he must have left some skin on the coarse wood of the walkway.

“You fucking--”

As he attempts to stand up, he sees the airspeeder that knocked him off his feet has stopped about ten feet away, hovering above the walkway.

A Cattesian standing next to it almost makes Alnam laugh. The vision is funny, Alnam has to admit: the birdman balances on one foot, his wings spread, a fluorescent drawing painted on them. Alnam nearly loses himself in the spirals and coils of that masterpiece.

Then his brain finally manages to hit the alarm button.

Blaster! The fucker’s got a blaster!

And he’s aiming it at you.

Alnam stops, half-crouched. His right eye begins burning: blood from the wound reached it.

The blaster in the clawed foot of the Cattesian moves slightly to the left. Go.

Alnam doesn’t need an interpreter to get that.

Four more birdmen sit in the crescent long seat of the aircar. Another blaster immediately prods Alnam under the ribs. The first one looks him right in the eye.

As Alnam struggles to blink the blood away, a voice calls to him: “No panic, pigster. We’re here to talk. For now.”

He looks around. There it is: a 3PO unit head mounted on a small terminal. Wires everywhere. Too costly to bring the entire thing along: two extra birdmen can fit instead.

A Cattesian with faded feathering twits something. The others laugh. A sign of who’s boss here.

“Love your booze a little too much, pigster? Can’t stand on your feet?”

Alnam feels he’s about to start joking back. Alnam feels he’s about to piss himself.

Jokes come out first.

“Are you guys from the anti-alcohol league or something?” Okay, okay, don’t hold it. Show them you speak their language.

A blaster-whip on the head lets Alnam know these fuckers aren’t here for jokes. Also brings him one step closer to pissing himself.

“They allow buffoons like you into the RDS nowadays? Tsk, tsk.” The droid clearly pronounces every sound of his tsks. “These are indeed the last days of the Republic. Well, listen here, pigster, ‘cause we won’t say it twice. Stop poking your nose into the transmission.”

Oh fuck.

“Furthermore, stop snooping around the factory district if you value your legs. Is that clear?”

Shit. Think! You expected this would happen. You prepared for it.

“What the fuck, guys, I wasn’t snooping! I was just fucking doing busywork for my bosses! It’s nothing!”

“Stop squealing, little pigster, or we’ll drop you out.”

Only now Alnam realizes the speeder has gained height.

“When we say stop snooping around, and we say stop snooping around now, you stop snooping around whatever your bosses say.”

Didn’t take your blaster to Obar’s. What would you do if you did? Play a gunslinger? These fucking birds would ice you faster than you can reach for the thing even if you were sober.

“Okay, noted. I won’t go to the factory district anymore.”

“Stop talking to people. Don’t fucking talk to them, understand? Enough of this fucking investigation. The only thing you’re gonna find is us. Do you wanna find us? Huh?”

“No, I don’t... I don’t want to find you.”

“Thatta smart pigster!”

There you go. The nano-droid capsule. Right in your pocket.

“Conclude your little research, little pigster, and leave Skados. We don’t care where you run. Just leave. Your stench is getting too vapid.”

Problem: if you as much as reach in for it, they’ll ice you.

“I understand. But I have a partner. I’ll have to convince her.”

He can feel the capsule through the fabric of his breeches. His hands are not inside his pockets. Everything is good.

“The hammerhead? Do what you want, but get her off the planet too.”

He tries to push the capsule out. No way: his hands are too numb to manage that.

“I’ll need to look like I’m doing my job. Otherwise, she’ll get suspicious.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that our problem?”

No fucking way he’s getting it out of his pocket.

“Look, I won’t actually investigate anything. But if I just up and go, they’ll fire me and send somebody else to work on the case next week. Somebody not as incompetent and alcoholic as me.”

And so he breaks it within the pocket.

The old Cattesian looks at his goons. They discuss something that the droid doesn’t translate.

Come on! Is it working? Are the droids just gonna stay inside Alnam’s breeches? He tries to head them outside, although even now he realizes the futility of that.

“Alright,” says the droid, “we don’t want any more pigsters here. You’re one too many as it stands. Make sure they don’t send any more.”

“I will. I will pretend like I’m working. That’s all I do anyway. It can last for however long you want.”

“Don’t expect us to pay you, pigster.”

“Okay, fair enough. The only thing I want right now from you is that you let me go before I pissed all over your aircar.”

No laughter now, either. No blaster-whipping, though, too.

Fresh air hits his lungs like hallucinogenic smoke. He can’t believe he got out alive.

Doesn’t recognize the place at once. Then it hits him as well: he’s near Obar’s house.

“One last thing, pigster,” the droid tells him from behind his back. “Don’t think of going to the Skados pigsters. They are our pigsters!”


	12. Krev Devin VI

“How did you get in the last time?”

Sitting in an airspeeder next to the Republic Administration is like sitting on a burner cap. It sleeps for now -- but there’s no telling when it’s gonna get turned on.

“Fadrina got me a pass. I drove in and waited in the garage. From there, we snuck the stiff in.”

There’ll be no passes this time, Krev knows. Every fart the reps make now needs to be okayed with Coruscant.

“Smart decision, eh? To store it in there. Who came up with it?”

The demonman sneers. “Where else could we store it? And we needed it to make you all cooperative.”

“Coulda bought some old warehouse, you know. Not like that would beggar Alnam.”

He still can’t believe how easy it was to buy one. No IDs asked. Krev had known where to look for a right real estate agent, sure. Still was surprised.

The Devaronian shrugs.

“We should just leave it there,” Krev says. He’s only half-joking. “What are the chances the next representative will kick the bucket any time soon? They won’t even know there’s a dead clone in their fridge.”

“And what if they find it? That would put Fadrina in danger. And we don’t want that, do we?”

Krev wouldn’t mind that. Let the whole jolly company be in danger, not just him.

“How do we get it out?” he asks.

“Hell if I know. But we’d better do it in the next week.”

The new rep is going to arrive shortly after that. Chances are, some of his security will get to Telos in advance to check if everything’s okay. If there are any unaccounted dead men anywhere on the premises.

“You were inside. You know the layout.”

“Lotsa good knowing the layout will do us. We are outside, old man -- if you haven’t noticed.”

“Let’s just start with something.”

The demonman scratches his head. The rings on his horns make a deep, low sound whenever he hits them with his nails. “The garage is two levels down from the main entrance. The morgue is one level down from there.”

“So not a long way away?”

“Not really. There’s a lift right in the garage, but Fadrina didn’t know the code that would take it down to the morgue.”

“How did you get in, then?”

“We took the stairs. There’s a separate code for the back door and the lift.”

“The code could have changed.”

“No shit.”

Krev thinks. “No. That’s unlikely. They have a lot of shit on their hands right now. Why would they change the code to the fucking morgue, of all things?”

“It can be an automatized process.”

“Okay. So what happens if we enter a wrong code?”

The Devaronian shrugs again. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I thought you were the tech prodigy in our relationship.”

“Fuck yes I’m smart. But I don’t automatically see how electro things do their electro magic,” the demonman syllabizes. “What you saw on that holo-feature was made up. “How should I know? Maybe they don’t think the morgue is super important. At least, unless there’s somebody stored. So maybe you’re just prompted to put in another code. Or maybe it raises the alarm.”

It just can stop getting better, can it?

“Fine,” says Krev. “Let’s leave the codes for now. Are there cameras?”

“It’s a Republic facility. Of course there are cameras. It’s chock-fucking-full of cameras.”

“How did you deal with them the last time?”

“I didn’t. Fadrina deleted the records later.”

“How come you didn’t get caught in process? Nobody’s watching the feed?”

“Pfft. Even a droid’s brain will fry after a few days of watching over an empty room.”

The Republic in all its no-fucks-given glory, ladies and gents. On Manaan, they had to check the CCTV once every ten minutes -- no excuses. Had some special algorithms tracking if anything unusual had occurred in-between the checks.

“Okay. So Fadrina will delete the feed for us once more.” That’s reassuring: it’s something he doesn’t have to do.

The red fucker doesn’t think so. “No. Too dangerous for her.”

“She did it once, she can do it again.”

“That was before they started trying to look good. Don’t you know how it works? Shit hits the fan, and suddenly there’s this rush to make the facility look exemplary.”

“Please tell me you’re fucking with me. She works there, for heaven’s sake.”

“Exactly, and I don’t want her to get into any more trouble than she’s already in.”

Oh, great. A fair lady’s champion. Dumb as a boot and full of resolve.

“Look,” says Krev, “if we are caught, she’s fucked anyway. I don’t know about you, but I’m not gonna keep silent when the Repos start breaking my toes.”

“Then we’d better not get caught. We’ll delete the feed on our own and turn the cameras off while we’re at it.”

There’s no arguing with somebody this stupid. Krev’s not about to, anyway. Maybe the Galaxy will make the big red idiot change his mind when they’re in. Until then, it’s like talking to a duracrete wall.

“Won’t they suspect something’s not right when they see the cameras are off?”

“They’ll just think it’s a malfunction. Nothing’s gonna get stolen -- far as they’ll be able to tell. They won’t look into it.”

“Do you know where the security post is?”

“Didn’t see it myself. Fadrina should know, though.”

“Nice. So we’ll have to go by a woman’s directions. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better.”

“There are plenty of ways it can. We still don’t know how to get inside.”

When the demonman’s right, he’s right.

“They won’t let us in the garage,” Sorval says. “That’s the biggest problem.”

“Yeah, we can’t exactly smuggle the corpse in our pockets. Wait,” Krev jumps in his seat, “is there a furnace in there?”

Today’s not the day of the Galaxy being kind to Krev, though.

“No,” the demonman says. “It’s just a room with a bunch of freezing chambers. That’s what a morgue is, right?”

“Shit.” Time to think again, Krev boy. With how much you’ve been doing that nowadays, you’d think you’re some fancy philosopher from Alderaan. “Alright. We can’t just drive in. But we can walk in. Or rather, you can.”

The Devaronian looks at him.

“It’s an embassy,” Krev keeps going. “They let you in if you have a reason to be there. Like if you need a Republic visa.”

The Devaronian nods. Then he jerks his head and says, “You ever tried getting one? I have. It takes several months to just schedule an appointment. And that’s in normal circumstances -- not in the clusterfuck that’s up now.”

“Fadrina will speed the process up. And don’t give me any of that ‘we can’t put her in danger’ crap. Her mastermind planning is what got us into this mess, so let her do something useful.”

The Devaronian looks as if he’s ready to charge. Krev’s ready for that, too.

But eventually, Sorval just says, “Let’s say she does that. We go in.”

“No-no-no. You go in. You go in and open the garage for me.”

“And just how do I go about that?”

“You hide inside the building until everybody leaves.”

“It’s the stupidest thing you could’ve said, old man. There’s always somebody inside.”

“Okay, until most of them leave. Fadrina wasn’t taking you in when it was a workday, was she? You hide inside, you wait, you turn off the cameras, and you open the garage.”

“And you just drive in and out? Why don’t you just sit this one out while you’re at it?”

Krev’s trying to be patient. “Look. I can’t apply for a fucking visa. I’m a wanted man. Besides, and try to listen this time, I’m not the one who knows how to turn the cameras off. I’m not the one who’s been inside. You’re better qualified for it.”

“Fuck.” The Devaronian angrily leans back in his seat.

“Let me know when you get a better plan.”

“Fuck. When do we do it?”

“As soon as Fadrina gets you an appointment. Which should be as soon as possible, if she doesn’t want anyone to find the surprise. And before we go in, we have to get our agitprop gig up and running.”

Sorval seems to be as happy as Krev is to change the topic. “Everything’s in order. Secure lines, computers, everything.”

“Then hire the guys. You told me you knew someone who can do the thing.”

“Yeah.”

“So hire them. Tell me how much money you need, and I’ll pay them.”

The demonman is fast. He organizes the Shadowfeed warriors the next evening. Two of them: a Human male, very young, and a Besalisk one, much older.

“The Republic has fallen,” Agvar, the Besalisk, tells Krev at the briefing. “The Senate has been overtaken by a secret cabal that gathers at the moon of Sojourn once a standard year. They conspire to further make us all complacent and take away our freedoms.”

“What’s your position on the war?”

“They call them Separatists and swine-dogs and such. But in reality, the CIS is the only beacon of hope that’s still left. Even the Jedi Order has been neutralized by the elites! They’ve got their teeth removed and can’t protect us any longer. I’m not trying to say Count Dooku or the Muuns have our best interests in mind, of course -- that would be foolish. But they are our best hope to change the status quo and take back our liberty!”

“I bet you’re gonna like the job, then.” Krev turns to the youth. “What about you?”

“Me? I’m just a student, man.”

“A student, huh? Journalism? Technology?”

“No, medicine. I just need money.”

“Which you’ll get. That is, if you show more enthusiasm than I’m seeing now.”

“Yeah, the Republic sucks, okay? Look, I promise I will be, you know, authentic. It’s just easier for me to communicate over the Net. I have a large experience, um,” the boy glances at Sorval, “um, communicating both in the Holonet and the Shadowfeed. So don’t worry, I’ll do everything, uh... perfectly.”

Krev looks at the Devaronian too.

“He’s good,” the demonman says. “They both are.”

Krev briefs his hirelings. He tells about: ConCare. Some clones are lobotomized -- emphasis on some. (Agvar gets disappointed by that). The Republic is evil and incompetent. He doesn’t tell about: the many tax schemes. Who’s behind the operation. Dangor Industries engineers.

“I’ll give you the documents,” he says. “It doesn’t matter where they come from. What matters in that their author was a clone trooper. You’ll be spreading his memoirs, so to speak.”

What he gives them is a greatly sanitized, Alnam-approved version of the diary. No mentions of anything too crazy.

Enough to prove it’s not a work of fiction, though.

Additional rules: only work from this here warehouse. Only work through a secure line. Make your outbound traffic bounce around a little across various systems and transceivers. No talking about the gig to anyone.

The Besalisk gives Krev real bad vibes on that account.

“Can we trust the four-hands?” he asks Sorval once the four-hands and the young one have left.

“He’s an alright guy.”

“Doesn’t look like he can keep his mouth shut.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have told him all our secrets, then.” The Devaronian sighs. “He can keep a secret, believe you me.”

“Has kept yours?”

“Ask him.”

This whole thing is giving Krev real bad vibes.

“What about your Rep visa?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember,” Sorval says. “The day after tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll get a car by then, then.”

“I still don’t know how I’ll be able to hide in the fucking embassy for so long. My appointment is for 3 PM, and they aren’t leaving until at least, I don’t know, eight.”

“Don’t try to drag the meeting out. The later it is, the fewer people the guards have to keep an eye on.”

“They’ll also get tired by the end of their shift. So I don’t know. They have these passes. I’ll need to close mine at the exit but somehow stay inside.”

“Okay. We still have time to come up with something.”

“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to hear. Something. Glad you’re not the one risking your ass, fucko?”

To tell the truth, Krev is.

Not once he gets in an aircar in two days, though. No gladness is left then.

From there, it really looks like Krev’s risking his ass all right. His car hovers two levels above the embassy’s main building, across the lane from it. Sticks out like a sore thumb -- no other speeders parked here.

He bought the aircar used from Gzulla’s distant kinsman. Another grace bestowed on him by Vygo Alnam. The insides of it smell like a Dug. Hours and hours of Dug howling on the stereo. Dug trinkets and amulets glued to the rearview screen. The altitude clutch is all fucked up. Sinks right in when you as much as suggest diving.

However: good, spacious body. Good for body transportations.

Krev sits waiting. Dugs howl at him from the speakers. His blaster warms his thigh up.

Krev’s done some preparation: counted the hours real carefully and took some G right so that the euphoria has expired by now. His hands are steady. His mind is not.

Why is he even here? He could’ve taken the money and run: Alnam doesn’t transfer funds to his account as the need arises. Too attention-drawing, if you believe the old fucker. It’s all there already. Krev’s seen it: almost two million credits. All there. Enough to start a new life. Enough to start any life. Just take it. Alnam will be notified, sure. You’ll have to run. But you’ve done it before. Escaped Manaan before they found you. Why not try it now?

Did you start believing in the old fucker’s cause?

Can it really work out? The four-handed Agvar and the laid-back Triskin fan Alnam’s fire even now. What if it works?

It’s stupid to think about it now, he tells himself.

Sure is, he also replies. But it beats thinking about the mission.

Another Republic. One without banthashit lobbying and tax evasion schemes. One without a war to keep in people who don’t want to stay in. One that doesn’t cut parts of people’s brains out to see what happens and how they would socially adapt.

Alnam is no better than Palpatine, Krev tells himself. Don’t let him fool you. They are all one and the same. Not one is better than the rest.

But maybe -- just maybe -- he can give it all a kick in the right direction.

What’s that? I thought your naivety died on Kessel. It should have, at any rate.

His comlink goes off. Fadrina.

“I’m done for today,” she says. “But I can go home on my own. Just pick up the boy, will you?”

Speaking the spy language. She’s not wrong: a one-way secure channel built-in by the comlink manufacturer has got nothing on Alnam’s stationary access points. A secure channel doesn’t prevent shit -- well, maybe save for the neighborhood kiddies playing hackers.

But the news is good. What she says: she managed to sneak Sorval’s pass out. Sorval has officially left the embassy.

Now it’s all up to the demonman.

Krev waits. It’s getting hard to focus on anything: Fadrina’s call was a border. Before it, Krev had known there still was time.

Fucking clone. Should have just run away. Could be living a good life now. A Krev sort of life, really -- so maybe not so good. Still better than lying dead in an ice cell of some bumfuck nowhere embassy.

Could’ve been a better shooter. Then it would’ve been up to him to get Krev’s corpse out of there.

No, Krev thinks, this is where your good intentions get you. In a fucking ice cell. You’re a pawn -- a good, physical pawn, none of that holographic shit: Vygo Alnam can afford things that actually exist -- and sometimes, you get knocked off the board when the great Alnam plays his another pawn. The clone didn’t understand it. Can be forgiven: he was just a test-tuber. Had no life experience. You can’t, and you won’t, because there’ll be no one to forgive you.

It’s not like he can leave now. He needs to do this mission. Then, after Alnam gives him access to the account again...

Why does Krev feel like he won’t run away? Like he’ll go out of his way to emulate the poor test-tuber idiot?

He tries convincing himself he’ll fly to Coruscant as soon as he can. He tries bargaining. Alnam is done for, he tells himself. Just look at his organization: these morons can’t do anything without shitting their pants. You’re now trying to clean the mess they created simply hiring you.

Nothing works.

Hours go by. Soundtrack: Dug songs. All sound the same, yet when a new one starts, something shifts in the tone and hits Krev as if with electricity. At least he can’t fall asleep for long. Not that his mind would let him anyway.

Hours go by. Republic people start flying away from the embassy. Their cars are all nice and fancy. Some are probably the only specimens of their models on Telos IV. You can tell the Republic people in the crowd -- same as you could tell the mine owners and big shots on Kessel. Same attitude, same coloring.

And you think there’ll be no people like that with Alnam as the supreme chancellor?

He knows there will, but hope grows inside his chest like a tumor: what if there won’t? Alnam was able to build a huge industrial empire. Why can’t he reform the Republic into something better?

Okay. Even if he can -- which no adult should believe -- he can do it with or without Krev. What’s Krev? He’s nobody. Whatever he can do, someone else can do better. And Alnam’s money can buy that someone. No need for Krev to stay. He’s not a revolutionary.

And you’d rob Alnam for two millions?

Why wouldn’t he? What are two million credits -- give or take -- to Alnam? He’s got hundreds of billions.

And if he wins? Do you think he’s going to forget about you?

The Galaxy at large should forget about Krev Devin. Won’t be the first time she forgot someone. A new name. A new face -- maybe. A new life. Two millions can buy many things.

And if Alnam does win in the end? Really does? You won’t have to hide anymore.

And become a guard dog for the new regime? No thanks.

That’s the best case. Nobody needs grunts like you after the revolution’s done. You’re easier to get rid of than to make complacent.

So what? The next time Alnam opens the account, you’re stealing all the money from it? Putting it all into another bank? That sort of shit will look suspicious. No. Open many accounts beforehand. Spread the money across them. That’s gonna take time. Come up with something that’s going to cost a shit ton so that Alnam doesn’t immediately get suspicious. Well, he’s going to get suspicious the moment you tell him you need exactly as much money as there is on the account. Shoot lower.

Or the other way around? Shoot higher? What can the gig need that costs more than two million?

He can figure it out later. That’s not a bad idea, though. And if he can manage to convince Alnam it’s Alnam’s idea... nah, that’s not gonna fly. The old man is too smart and careful. But he can buy that Krev needs more funding. Maybe. And Krev can maybe find something much cheaper than initially expected. Save Alnam some money.

That can work.

His comlink gives two beeps. A signal from the demonman.

Or not. Krev peers into the embassy’s dark windows. Tells himself no one would torture Sorval into telling about their plan even if the dumb fucker got caught. They’d just take him out of the building. Maybe call the cops -- at worst.

But what if the dumb fucker got scared and started talking before they asked him anything?

Krev tells himself to shut it.

The clutch sinks in. The airspeeder’s nose drops. Krev checks the rearview. Many-handed Dug deities look back at him.

He’s ready to floor it as he flies the aircar closer to the embassy garage. The dumb fucker could’ve got caught even after signaling him.

But the heavy metal shutter slides left, waking half the planet up. The Repos got themselves some nice technology: Krev can barely see the force field.

A single cargo speeder inside the garage. The windows are dead and empty. The demonman stands near a door in the back of the garage.

Krev parks his car. Takes a breathing mask out of the glove box. Puts it on: Sorval might have turned the CCTV off, but who knows what surprises the Repos can have in their domain.

Note the cargo speeder. Can have a dashcam inside.

So he puts the mask on.

And he’s very fucking much right to do so.

“Cameras off?” he asks the demonman.

“Not yet,” the dumb fucker replies.

Sometimes, it shocks Krev how smart he is.

“Why the fuck not?”

“We need the body first.”

“No, we... It’s not a fucking argument! Why the fuck didn’t you turn the cameras off?”

“I didn’t, okay? Now let’s take the corpse out.”

Krev’s ready to shoot him. Krev’s ready to run. Krev’s ready to shoot him.

“We got a problem?”

“Not if you cooperate,” the horned bastard says.

Krev grabs him by the lapels. “Then why the fuck didn’t you turn the cameras off?”

The fucker just pushes him away. Turns from him. Walks to the door.

Krev realizes.

“You stupid cocksucker,” is all he can say.

Then he follows the demonman.

They are on a narrow, poorly-lit stairwell. It looks a great deal like the one that leads into the heart of Vygo Alnam.

The morgue is one level down, Krev remembers. He also remembers they can’t enter it willy-nilly.

“The code?” he asks.

“She thinks she’s got it.”

No names, huh?

Smart.

“And if it’s wrong?”

The demonman doesn’t reply.

They go through an unlocked door from the stairs into a small hall. Two doors on the left and two on the right. Two planters with something palm-like in each: maybe alive, maybe artificial. A holoclock on the far wall. Time: 22.03.

Krev’s eyes search for cameras. There: left corner. Just one.

Even under the mask his face burns. He turns it away from the camera.

The demonman walks to the farther door on the right. The codepad glows slightly in the darkness of the hall. The demonman’s hand stops two inches away from it. Then he enters four numbers.

A soft click. The door slides to the side.

Dim orange light within. Their shadows prostrate on the floor, trying to crawl out of the morgue.

Three fridges are sunk into the wall on the right. A low table stands to the left from the entrance.

“Remember which one you put it in or we’ll have to play three shells?” Krev asks.

The demonman remembers. He opens the leftmost fridge. Smart -- had anyone died in the embassy, they would’ve put the body in the fridge closest to the door.

With a soft clank, a tray emerges. Krev’s surprised how large the fridge is: perhaps a standard issue, big enough to accommodate a dead representative of any species.

The clone looks downright tiny on the autopsy tray. He looks much older now. Krev wonders if it’s death that makes him seem like some ancient sage or his fingers stuck as if giving a blessing.

He steps closer to the tray. The clone’s eyes are still open. He knows he didn’t close them for him, but why didn’t Fadrina or Sorval?

He reaches his hand to stop Brate’s gaze, but the demonman’s hiss stops him: “What are you doing? Take him by his shoulders!”

As they struggle with the body, Krev understands the deserter is doomed to eternal seeing: the Repos don’t skimp on power here, and the corpse is frozen almost solid. Even to close the eyelids would be impossible.

Sorry, he thinks for some reason.

They put the body down, and Sorval puts the tray back into the fridge. Closes the door.

“Figure they won’t find any... traces?” Krev asks.

“They may -- if they bother to check it.”

Won’t they notice a drop in power consumption, Krev wants to ask. Doesn’t: they haven’t noticed the increase, have they?

Not to mention, he really doesn’t want to make another detour to the substation.

Krev’s got an idea: let the red idiot go to the security post while Krev carries the clone to the garage. But by the time they make it to the end of the hall, he knows it ain’t working: the body is too rigid. Difficult to manage even together with the demonman.

The stairs prove the toughest. Krev’s all sweaty when they enter the garage.

They put Brate in the back of Krev’s car. Krev’s glad the previous owner left a large blanket there.

What’s real tempting: to leave this very moment.

They haven’t got your face, he tells himself. No need to delete anything.

They got the demonman’s.

It’s demonman’s problems.

No, fuck it, and Krev means it. He’s never left anyone behind. Not Lance Corporal Devin of the short-lived Atnakis People’s Militia.

Look at you. A paragon of military virtue, ain’t ya?

Fuck it, Krev thinks. Fuck you all.

“Do you know how we get to the security booth?” he asks the demonman.

The demonman’s got his own ideas. “Get it out of here.”

“What?”

Krev can’t believe how relieved his voice sounds. Can only hope it’s not so obvious outside the mask.

“You heard me. Get it out.”

“And what, come pick you up later? Fuck that. I’m not coming back, so stop fucking around and lead the way.”

“Go. I’ll take care of everything.”

Krev can’t believe he’s arguing. He still is. “Do you plan to hide until morning? Then what? You don’t have a pass, remember?”

“I’ll figure something out. Go.”

Krev doesn’t move. He really wants to, but he doesn’t move.

The demonman’s eyes are full of commitment. He’s in it.

Go, Krev tells himself. You can do nothing here.

The demonman eyes him. Dead-set on doing it his way.

He won’t part with his moment of glory. With his exploit.

Krev turns away and gets in the airspeeder.

The demonman keeps watching him until he flies out of the garage.

His fucking choice, Krev tells himself. Let him be a hero if he wants. I mean, he’s hidden from whomever’s left inside for a couple of hours already. Can probably hide for more.

And if they catch him?

Well, he’s definitely not talking, then. You saw that, right? The guy’s a fucking loony. Proper fucking fanatic.

Not the kind Alnam takes him for, though.

He misses his turn and has to fly round the embassy building once more.

Start thinking straight, tells himself. You’re drawing attention. Focus on the task at hand. You can do all the philosophy later.

Seeing a slight jam ahead, he raises the airspeeder a lane up. Something catches his eye.

There: a window’s lit.

That’s probably where the guards are, he thinks. Tells himself: nothing to worry about. Keep going. You’re out of there. It’s not your problem anymore. Your problem: getting rid of the body.

But he doesn’t feel like he’s out of the embassy.

He slows down. Looks into the brighter window.

That’s where he’s left -- even though he’s piloting the aircar outside.

There: the demonman against the window, in two dancing spots of light. The horned silhouette is unmistakable.

Krev was right: that’s where the guards are.

He can’t see how many. The speeder’s moving too fast past the window. Can’t say if they got their blasters out or are just questioning the demonman.

Doesn’t need to see or know.

Doesn’t think: no time for that.

Before the window’s left behind, he does the stupid thing.

The speeder’s side rams through the transparisteel. The impact throws Krev against the door, and it pushes it open. Then it closes again -- his fear of falling out and forty levels down comes only when he’s safe again.

He can feel every table and every piece of debris his speeder hits as if it was his body hitting them. Barely registers the real pain: he knows his shoulder should hurt like mad but doesn’t really feel that.

Lights dance before his eyes. Krev can’t tell which ones are real and which are concussion-induced.

Then some of them disappear. Krev shakes his head. Some lights linger: those that follow his stare with a lag.

He looks left. No guards in the room: they’re probably too busy sealing it off.

Can’t see the demonman, either. Being honest with you, Krev, you just might’ve crushed him with your antics.

He still opens the door.

The air’s already getting sour. No shit: a speeder-sized hole in the window. Krev reaches for his breathing mask -- it somehow managed to stay in the passenger seat -- and only narrowly grabs it from under one hundred kilos of demonman meat that bounce on his laps and then on the seat.

While the demonman’s having a coughing fit, Krev brings the speeder outside of the embassy. Something falls down as he does. He can only hope nobody’s out for a stroll somewhere in the lower levels.

He doubts anyone is, though: not the weather for strolls tonight.

He’s grateful to the altitude clutch: the speeder goes down ten levels in as many seconds. There, Krev sends it past some lower building’s fancy corner tower and into the maze of Telos IV. He brings it down and down, and the police sirens that come in half a minute sound as distant as Krev’s past.

The demonman’s cough transforms into laughter. “I managed to delete it. You won’t fucking believe it, man, but I did.”

“Yeah, great. Now they won’t even know we were there.”

The demonman shifts in his seat. His horns hit the roof, and he makes a sudden nod.

“They won’t know why we were there,” he says and looks in the back of the car.

Krev does too. Half-covered by the blanket, the body seems smaller now than before.

“Uh-huh,” says Krev.

They go lower and lower until they arrive at the point of destination. Another abandoned factory: no shortage of those on the Clone-Wars Telos IV. They were making furniture here once -- maybe just to relieve the tax burden for some Inner Rim company. Got safety and enviro-friendliness to reflect that, to be sure. A huge furnace takes up two floors. Ejects its ashes and fumes right into the streets.

No need to worry about the ecology when it’s already dead.

The demonman has stored two canisters of fuel right by the furnace. One has an almost worn off Gran doing thumbs-up on it.

They refuel the furnace -- for the first time in two years, maybe. No need to worry about the locals noticing the smoke -- the sky of Telos IV won’t betray it.

Krev’s been worrying the furnace can be out of order, but the monstrous thing huffs and puffs and starts digesting the fuel it’s been given. Its maw glows orange, then yellow, then white.

They put Brate on a furnace tray. His body is not so stiff now, and a puddle of liquid has amassed under it in the car.

Krev tries to close the clone’s eyes. The eyelids won’t budge.

He watches with the demonman as the deserter’s corpse descends into hellfire.

Then a pipe sneezes the ashes out. Krev and Sorval watch through the large window in what must have been a senior manager’s office once. A short bang of grey dust hangs in the air for a second -- and then dissipates in the atmosphere.

“Man, what a shit place to find your final rest,” Sorval sighs.

Krev hems. “At least it’s not Geonosis.”

He has no strength left in him. Just keeps staring above the factory pipe.

He has no strength left in him but still flies the aircar to the ground level. Breaks the rearview hard disk. Leaves the speeder parked there, on the ground.

And then he goes home.


	13. Vad Alnam VII

“Who would have though irresponsible behavior would get us this far,” says Mtoro.

Not “your irresponsible behavior”. Alnam likes that.

“It is what it is,” he says.

His partner’s datapad shows the result of the nano-droids’s work: the car Alnam had been held in made it to a factory tower in the industrial district.

Mtoro drove the droids out of the car and around the building. Nice joint they got, those workers: with a full-blown recording studio right at the factory.

Before the droids’ lifespan ran out, they’d reported home a good portion of the layout of the place.

Smart little bastards, Alnam thinks affectionately. Managed to get out of his pocket.

“Why would they act in such a stupid way?” the Ithorian says. “Kidnapping an RDS operative is very serious business. Enough to send you to a jail for the rest of your life.”

“They were scared to death,” Alnam says. “I won’t say I wasn’t when they got me in their speeder, but they were scared way more than me. Wouldn’t have reacted this way otherwise.”

“And you think it was our visit to the factory district that made them this scared.”

“The droids say so.”

He nods at the datapad. He tries not to rub it in.

“Do you think the cops are involved, after all?”

Can’t let go of your theory, eh, Agent Apani?

But Alnam really tries to not rub it in -- although something is rising in his solar plexus like a wave he’s riding.

“The guys who got me didn’t wear uniforms. Could still be cops. Even if not, I’m sure the police is on it. You just start questioning our guys and see how they sing.”

Mtoro intertwines her fingers. “We won’t be informing Dibasi about it for now.”

“No, we won’t.”

It didn’t sound like a question, but Alnam feels like decision-making is now a tandem thing.

“There can be a lot of them in there,” he says. “I don’t think there will, but there can.”

“You think about requesting backup?”

“No. They might have contacts in the customs. No need to attract attention.”

“And it would take too much time anyway. So how are we going to take them out? Go in clandestinely?”

“Exactly. We’ll need to rent a speeder. Blacked-out windows. We’ll fly it to the spaceport. I’ll tell Obar to wait for us there. He’ll take our speeder and go to the sea, and we’ll take another one to the factory.”

“Can we trust Obar?”

“You’ve spoken to him.”

“Not as much as you. They got you right outside his house.”

“They were watching me the first time we had our little carousing.”

“Can we trust him?”

“We can.”

Mtoro looks at him for a few seconds. Then she says, “Fine then. But if the cops are involved, we’re going to find ourselves in the world of crap once we make the arrests.”

“True.”

“I’m thinking of calling an emergency with the administration.”

“So we’ll take cover at the Republic facility... Invoke the immunity and all. Well, apart from sinking our diplomatic relations with Skados VI, I see no downside to that.”

“As long as Ktii remains in power, we should be fine.”

“Right you are. It’s not like we have a choice, anyway.” Alnam stretches his back. “We’re doing it on Zhellday.”

“Do you think the broadcasts are really live?”

“It sure looks this way. I mean, we know they aren’t pre-recorded en masse. Povo Rapol mentioned that banker crashing his speeder the last time, and that happened the previous Centaxday. He also says what time it is when he’s going live, but yeah, that can be recorded a few days in advance and then just synchronized.”

“Well, Zhellday is our best bet.” Something in Mtoro’s tone tells Alnam she’s not so certain. “Okay, let’s see the approaches.”

They spend the next three hours looking at the holopics of the factory the aircar nests at. Most show it from within: safety commission visits, bosses’ hatchdays, new contracts being signed. Not much to take from those -- there aren’t any floor plans on the Holonet. They find some interconnections with the things the droids have told them, though.

Outside views are more interesting. Not a ton of detailed pictures, but Mtoro finds a presentation video about the factory that’s got a long shot of the exterior going around the tower.

“It’s from two years ago,” she says.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s anything better. Look, there are these catwalks at the bottom of the foundries.”

“I wouldn’t call it the bottom. It must be at least two hundred meters above the force field.”

“Yep. But there is access to the factory itself. Let’s see,” Alnam brings one of the pictures they’ve looked at back to the screen, “it probably leads to the area downstairs.” He points at the large number 1 painted on the wall behind the plumes of the Cattesian officials. “And here are the stairs. We know the location of the garage: it is at the lower levels. Makes sense -- you wouldn’t want to put anything on top of the foundries. So we want to go down as well.”

“But they’ll see us if we take the garage route,” Mtoro sighs. “So the catwalks it is.”

.

.

.

They’re probably watching, Alnam thinks. Would be stupid not to watch us.

He tries to guess which aircar behind them is the one. No long speeder -- his old acquaintance -- is present.

So the Cattesians are either smart or even stupider than he’d think.

Mtoro pilots their speeder. Their going to the starport must set the alarms off -- but that’s the only place in Skados City where you can rent a speeder and not draw too much attention. Plus: hard to follow anyone at a spaceport. Plus: they should be busy recording the next transmission for tonight.

It was Alnam’s decision. It is his operation. He knows it is. He knows Mtoro knows it as well. They haven’t discussed it, but they both know it.

Mtoro parks the aircar deep within the roofed lot. Not too many cars here: half the spots are empty. Alnam looks back once every ten seconds. No speeder has followed them inside.

He gets out of the car. Walks to the rental terminal. Rents one of the speeders parked in a dedicated row by the wall of the lot. Gets in.

Mtoro joins him. They wait. Their previous speeder blinks with its parking lights.

Obar walks out of an elevator in about five minutes: Mtoro called him. The Nautolan’s eyes wander around. He’s searching for them.

Obar finds them and stops in his tracks for a second. Alnam purses his lips. His leg twitches. He shouldn’t have enlisted a civilian. Not a junkie, at any rate.

But then Obar resumes his stroll and gets in the speeder with the blacked-out windows. He carefully flies it out of the parking spot and down the oval corridor leading outside.

They wait. Two more speeders leave the parking.

Alnam starts the engine.

His stomach is shrunk into a needle point when he drives out of the lot. Four lanes of speeders in front of him. Speeders trying to unload their passengers and cargo right at the spaceport doors without paying for parking. Speeders waiting for their passengers to come out of the building. Speeders trying to change lanes.

He turns right. That’s a longer route into the city. That’s a back-up safety measure.

Alnam knows it’s not going to help -- if the guys shadowing them haven’t bought his first trick, they ain’t going to buy this one. Still goes with it.

Mtoro doesn’t say anything.

He turns left before reaching the city. This turnpike goes straight to the industrial district.

The road there takes about half an hour. The traffic is sloooow today. Alnam wonders why just to wonder about something other than his operation.

His operation.

He starts gaining altitude when the force-field of the factory district recreation area becomes visible. The speeder breaks through some wisps of clouds, leaving their mangled corpses slither behind.

All the factory towers look alike, but Alnam knows his one like a mother knows her child. He’s looked at its pictures: every angle is printed in his brain.

He has to lower the speeder to reach the catwalk.

From up here, it doesn’t look like such a great idea to do what he’s about to do.

Hanging so far above the ground -- or force-field -- puts you in a different state of mind. Alnam’s never noticed how much a speeder rocks when hovering. Now he does.

The catwalk: narrow and porous. Has a rail, though, and doesn’t come falling down when Alnam lands on it.

Alnam wears a jacket, not that its thin leather does much this high. The wind here is freezing. What’s worse, it howls as if it already has blown Alnam off the catwalk.

The catwalk vibrates under Mtoro’s weight. It’s fine. Alnam has got used to how standing here works. Now it’s time to try walking.

Their speeder vanishes in the suggestion of fog. Mtoro’s idea: this way, it won’t give away their position if it yet hasn’t.

The rail is cold under Alnam’s fingers. Should’ve packed some gloves when going to Skados.

Mtoro says something -- he sees her mouths move -- but Alnam can’t hear a sound in all the wind.

So they make their way without words.

The catwalk takes them around the tower and between it and the one it is conjoined with. Here the wind is not permanent: the two duracrete colossi block it from most sides. When it finds its way in, the creeper, the air current becomes so strong Alnam and Mtoro have to turn their faces away from it: otherwise, there’s no breathing and their eyeballs feel like someone’s applying sandpaper to them.

They walk farther in between the two towers. The catwalk ends at a little balcony with a door to its right. Alnam wonders if workers go here to have a cigarette break.

The door: a double-leafed durasteel slab. No control panel in sight.

“How do we get in?”

He turns to Mtoro. She stands there with a blaster in her hand. Alnam chuckles: so absurd it is. They can shoot at this door for a year and not get any closer to opening it.

He doesn’t panic. That has nothing to do with his resolve, though: it’s more like the part of him responsible for panicking is shell-shocked.

He looks around. There are no other doors: they have landed close to the other end of the catwalk. Alnam’s guess is that they use the balcony for unloading trucks. He has no idea what the rest of the catwalk is here for.

He looks around. The towers connect several levels above their heads, but here at their bases they are separate: each stands on its own absurdly thin leg.

He looks across the precipice. The base of the other tower is also girdled with a catwalk. This one is much shorter. Five or seven meters, Alnam would presume. Doesn’t jut to the outer part of the tower. There, nice and cozy: a door. A fancy one: has a control panel at its side.

Alnam glances at the door he has. Why wouldn’t there be a control panel next to it as well?

“I’ll call the speeder back,” says Mtoro.

There’s doubt in her voice.

“What?”

“I don’t know, Vad. Look, there’s too little space to maneuver it.”

Alnam sees she’s right. Between all the rails and cables hanging from one tower to another, it would be hard even for Anakin Skywalker to pilot the aircar to the catwalk on the other side.

And he’s no Anakin Skywalker.

“Maybe let’s evacuate for now,” Mtoro says. “We can hire a swoop--”

“A swoop won’t go so far up. And good luck getting it to hover there long enough for us to get off.”

“Then what? What other choice do we have?”

Alnam bits his lip. He knows the answer.

He just hates it.

“Look,” he finally says, “there’s supposed to be a bridge. Here at the balcony. The rails are supposed to open.”

“There’s no control panel.”

“Seems like the other side got them all. See?”

Mtoro brings her blaster in front of her head, but Alnam raises his hand.

“Wait! If you fry it up, it can screw us real bad.”

“I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“With doors, right? Well, with doors, it’s not the end of the world if they get stuck somewhere in the middle. With the bridge...”

Mtoro lowers her blaster. “It seems like the only chance we’ve got.”

The fewer thoughts, the better.

“There are a few more.”

He takes his jacket off. It’s not so cold anymore.

“There. Two rails one above another. I can cross.”

“Are you mad?! No, you can’t.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I can,” he says as he takes the holster off his belt.

The lower rail looks wide enough. Runs maaaaybe two meters below the balcony. The upper one: much thinner. Looks sharp. Alnam wouldn’t want to grab it with his hands.

Luckily, he has his belt.

He ties one end of the belt around his wrist and lies down on the balcony’s edge. “Come on, hold me.”

Mtoro pauses before Alnam feels her hands on his shoulders.

“Nuh-uh. I still can’t reach it. Hold me by my legs.”

He tries to focus on the metal rail, but the blue screen several hundred meters down doesn’t let go of his attention.

Mtoro’s holding you. You aren’t falling anywhere.

“You know,” he says to say something, “I really don’t understand these art programs. Like, why does the government support some movie directors?”

He can’t reach under the rail with his free hand, so he has to throw the belt over it from below. The fucking thing keeps sliding off.

“I don’t know anyone who’d like those movies. It’s all propaganda, right? And shitty propaganda at that. They don’t just go for propaganda, but also manage to put a million of their weird fetishes in it.”

There! The plate stays on top of the rail. Alnam touches it as tenderly as he hasn’t touched anyone in more than two years. Come here, you little bastard!

“So nobody likes them, right? They never make their money back. But that’s not the point. Even had they been great and profitable, it still would’ve been unethical to waste taxpayers’ money on art.”

As he pulls at the free end, his left hand is dragged down.

The realization the balcony ends somewhere around his waist almost makes him kick at Mtoro.

He keeps talking. “And I’m not even talking about, you know, the medicine and education and the military. Even apart from those... Let’s say, they all were taken care of. Even then, it would be unethical to spend people’s money -- without their consent -- on art.”

He ties a knot around the rail as best he can. Checks if it’s slippery.

“There’s always someone who’s not going to... Okay, pull me back.”

He can’t stand up with his hand tied to the rail. Can’t even squat. Feels something under his chest -- and that’s improvement enough.

“Maybe let me do this,” says Mtoro.

“I’m lighter than you, Agent Apani.”

Alnam can’t tell if he’s happy to rest. He knows what’s coming, so the nice feeling of not hanging over an abyss isn’t so nice.

He crawls under the balcony railing and brings his feet forward.

Son of a bitch -- he never thought he’d make an acrobat.

Think about the rail. Just the rail.

He wants to be thinking about his son. About his duty to the Republic. About his father, maybe. Or even about Ormi.

No such luck, Agent Alnam.

He takes a dive. He’s sure he missed the rail -- for the whole second it takes his feet to hit the fucking thing.

The rail bends under his weight. The feeling of a free fall strives to squeeze Alnam’s guts out of him. His back feels every single meter that separates it from the force field.

Then the belt tightens. Tries to dislocate his shoulder.

Alnam grabs onto it with both his hands. It almost throws his feet off the lower rail, but he finds his balance.

“Careful!” he hears Mtoro scream.

“Yeah, thanks!” he replies.

He looks across the gap. Gonna be tough twenty meters.

He takes the first step. The knot slips along the upper rail only when Alnam pushes it with his free hand.

The other side doesn’t look any closer.

Alnam takes another step. Another. Can’t think about anything. All that’s left of him is the pattern: left foot. Right foot. Then adjust the knot. Left foot. Right foot. Adjust the knot. Left foot. Right foot. Adjust the knot. Left foot. Right foot. Adjust the fucking knot.

Wind comes breaking into this world like an invading army of extragalactic horrors. Both rails start having a seizure -- with Alnam stuck between.

He holds to the upper rail. No hope the belt will save him: it may be durasteel-reinforced all it wants, but Alnam’s knottery is just not up to the task. As soon as he pulls on it with all of his weight, he’d done for.

Smart of him to have taken off his jacket: it would’ve open up now like a sail.

As he’s trying to turn his face away from the wind, he’s thinking -- or maybe he’s talking, he cannot say. To the Galaxy. To the fate. To himself.

Let me survive this, he’s saying. Let me survive this. I’ll be a better man, just let me survive this. People depend on me. My son does. Let me survive this. I won’t take him from his mother. He’s better off with her. I knew it, I always did. Just let me live!

Another gush comes, knocking Alnam’s hand off the rail.

But no other gush follows.

Mtoro screams something at him. His brain is physically incapable of registering the meaning of her words.

He proceeds. His hands are numb, and he lowers the right one. It tingles as blood returns to it like a family to the charred ruins of their home.

And he proceeds.

Left foot. Right foot. Adjust the knot. Adjust the balance.

It’s panic-inducing when he realizes there’s no more rail to pattern along. But it is what it is: the body of the second tower is so, so close. He’s made it.

That is, if he can make it to the catwalk.

He gives his hand some rest. At least some parts of him should be ready.

He grabs the rail and pulls himself up. The metal is cold. The edges are sharp. It bends and rebounds under him.

But Alnam catches it with his thighs. Blood finally races to his left arm. It feels great to not be standing stretched between two fucking rails.

He crawls to the catwalk. Grabs its floor -- bless the engineers who made it have these little holes! Pulls himself up. No-go. Okay. That’s fine. Just wait a second. Catch your breath.

He pulls himself up again. This time, he doesn’t stop until he brings his body onto the catwalk.

It feels like every bit of strength has been pumped out of his muscles, and he’s happy to be this amorphous mass. He wrestles his hand out of the knot -- he prefers not to dwell on how loose said knot has become -- and just lies panting on the cold and dimpled durasteel.

Slowly, Alnam sits up. The bridge control panel looks at him. No fancy stuff: just an extend/collapse button. Nice and easy. He wouldn’t be able to solve any hacking puzzles after his rope dancing.

He feels really awkward while he watches Mtoro cross the bridge. Feels like he has nothing to do. Feels like laughing because of it.

“Are you alright?” Mtoro asks, concern oozing from both of her mouths.

“Sure.”

“Well, look at you. I guess it looked scarier than it was.”

The joke is poor, but Alnam laughs. Mtoro does too.

“You dropped something, Agent Alnam.”

She hands him his jacket and his holster.

“Yeah. I’m afraid, I won’t be of much use in a fight, though. My hands are shaking. Too much strain. Not like I was scared.”

Mtoro laughs again. “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to a fight, then.”

Alnam still takes the blaster out of the holster. He’s not picking the belt up -- so he puts the holster in a pocket of his jacket.

The door yields to them at once -- Alnam’s spider tricks must have impressed it. They don’t even have to shoot the control panel.

Behind the door is a dark hallway. It exhales soft, warm, fusty mechanical hum.

“We should hurry up,” says Alnam. “Before they’re done recording for today.”

That is, if they’re even recording the day of the broadcast.

They go in. They don’t have the lay of the land for this tower: the droids had burnt through their energy reserves doing the reconnaissance of the main one.

“What are they doing here?” Mtoro asks. “Rent this place out?”

Alnam just shrugs. A timer ticks in his brain: Rapol won’t stay here forever.

His partner’s right, though. The place got the look of one of those office buildings on Coruscant that get foreclosure signs on them before they open. Transparent inner walls show conference rooms and gyms with enough ropes to induce a stress attack in someone who just crossed an abyss with nothing to keep him safe but a belt.

Not a person in sight. No lights -- it’s only thanks to the transparisteel walls that Alnam sees where he’s going.

They make their way to a tube in the middle of the tower. The turbolifts. Powered.

“You sure we don’t want to search for the stairs?” Mtoro asks.

Alnam ponders on that. There are sure to be cameras in the turbolifts.

But so there might be on the stairs. Could be some at the entrance.

If anybody’s watching, it would be easy to just send the elevator and the annoying RDS operatives down to the ground level. At the free fall speed -- if said operatives are extra annoying.

They won’t do it. Alnam knows. Even somebody drugged out of his mind would never kill an RDS agent. Kidnap one -- maybe. Maybe even hit one on the head. That they might do.

And somebody’s about to answer for that.

“We take a ride,” he says.

The ride ends six levels above. There, across a crowded lobby, is a passageway into the second tower -- a prism with its two upper sides made of transparisteel.

Nobody reacts to Mtoro and him as they walk into the next tower. Every bird here has something to do, be it watching some weird laser-based game on a screen on the wall, speaking to other birds, or checking something on their datapads. There are some aliens on this level: Alnam spies a Gotal arguing with a cafstim machine in the corridor between the towers, a couple of Sy Myrthians taking pictures, and one or two characters whose species he can’t tell.

The next tower looks more like a structure above a slow-burning cauldron of toxins should: empty. Also has an elevator in the middle, but it won’t go to the lower levels.

That’s fine. They can take a walk.

The lower levels start resembling a factory -- the lower they descend, the more. Mechanic arms put boxes on magnetic conveyor belts that go round or up or down.

It doesn’t take long before Alnam begins discerning the places he’s seen in the nano-droid footage. This realization makes him forget how tired he is.

More Cattesians in a tiny offshoot corridor. These watch Alnam and Mtoro with panicking squawking.

But it doesn’t matter: Alnam sees the recording studio in the end of the corridor. Full to the fucking brim with birdmen.

“RDS!” he shouts, and it’s the best fucking feeling in the whole wide Galaxy. “Down on the floor!”

The Cattesians outside of the studio comply.

“Everybody down!”

Those inside the studio don’t. Alnam remembers what Giles said: transparisteel made by a panic rooms manufacturer.

All the better.

“Open the door!” he commands the Cattesian closest to the studio.

The poor bird squeaks something in her tongue, not knowing whether to stand up and do what she’s told or to finish lying down.

Mtoro solves it for her, shooting the door control panel.

The door slides open. No sticking in the middle. Not today.

“RDS! Get down!” Alnam repeats for his new audience.

He knows Mtoro controls the people in the corridor. It’s the first arrest he’s working with her, but he feels safe as if they’ve covered each other’s back for a million times before.

That’s the way with law enforcement. You either trust your partner or don’t work in law enforcement.

He sees -- from the corner of his eye -- a Cattesian behind a music desk reach for some laser grid with his wing. Doesn’t hesitate to introduce the feathered fuck to the might of his DC-17’s stunner. The feathered fuck leans on one arm of his chair and falls down, chair included. No one rushes to help him.

“You’re all under arrest for government destabilization, inciting of civil disturbances, and anti-Republic libel. I will now read and explain your rights to you.”

Before he does, though, he peeks inside the recording booth. There, at a mic with a large letter Forn on it, sits Isk Povo Rapol. Alnam would recognize his dull feathering anywhere.

Alnam smiles at him and waves him a short greeting.


	14. Krev Devin VII

The first thing Krev does when he gets home is shoot some glitterstim into his veins. He feels like it’s well-deserved -- it may kill him, but it’s well-deserved.

It doesn’t help. The sense that something’s missing still lingers. Krev tells himself he’s done everything for today. That it’s time to let go of his worries. He’ll think about how he’s going to rip Alnam off some other day.

But it’s not Alnam. It’s something else.

I got rid of the clone, Krev thinks. They got nothing on me now. Well, apart from me breaking into the embassy -- but who cares about that? They’ll chalk it up to Separatists. Nothing Alnam can do about that.

But it’s not Alnam. It’s the clone.

The drug doesn’t usually make Krev sentimental. It’s chemistry, not magic: it won’t bring out something you don’t have.

Today’s different, though.

Krev tries to bargain with the feeling. He tells it he’s sorry he shot the test-tube bastard. Test-tuber or not, that wasn’t cool. Not the bastard’s fault he was from a tube. But what happened, happened -- nothing to be done about that.

The feeling doesn’t subside.

Krev tries to shake it off. Logs in to play some Sabacc. The feeling tells him it’s no good. The feeling tells him he’s playing against the clone deserter.

Brate. That was the bastard’s name.

“Why did you even desert?” Krev asks aloud. “Didn’t have a family to run back to. Why then?”

He opens the archive. It’s as if he’s making it up to the clone.

“It’s not for shooting you,” he mumbles. “It’s for your eyes.”

He starts reading the file -- My life, that’s where he expects Brate to have put his thoughts on desertion -- from about the five-sixths mark. It helps Krev keep the pretense he’s doing it just out of obligation.

He’s read some of it already -- well, glanced over it, more like -- when he was deciding which file to feed to Alnam. Now he puts an effort into it: he’s killed the clone and now he owes him some space in his head. Some space to continue his existence.

“It was when we were leaving Geonosis. We were all a little scared, maybe. Of what was to come. Geonosis was terrible. Everything about it was. The weather, the bugs... the war. I’m not saying it wasn’t. We were happy it was over. But we also were scared to go.”

Krev finds himself smiling. Seems the test-tuber bastard had looked inside his head well before Krev allowed him to.

It was like that during his last days on Atnakis. He had no idea where he’d go after the truce was signed. Knew he had some money to get him through the first few months, but it was scary to think about going back. Going back to the actual life.

Actual life. Not something Brate would have known. But Krev understands him -- and feels like Brate would’ve understood him, too.

“All we knew was that they were transferring us to Skor II. We were ready to fight. I thought I was. But...

“I remember the first day after the battle. There was no fighting. None. Before that, even if we weren’t engaging the Geos, there was always fighting going somewhere else. We would hear it. See the flashes. When we held the same position for a couple of days, we could tell who was fighting by those flashes. Other companies could tell when we were fighting, too. Sometimes, it was a signal for us to help our comrades out. Sometimes, we couldn’t. If... if we were ordered to keep our position. We’d just sit and wait for the artillery or air forces to come rescue the other boys. Sometimes they did.

“But that day, there was nothing. No flashes. No sounds of bombing. Nothing.

“There was music, though. It was... it was the first time I heard the songs we were listening to. I mean, really heard. I don’t know. I don’t have much to compare them to. But I think it was the best music in the Galaxy.

“At first, we were a bit on the edge. We knew that the factory had been destroyed, but... there was this feeling like it wasn’t. Maybe it’s because we were ready to fight. We were expecting something to go off. But nothing did.

“And then, I think we just started to feel the peacefulness of the moment. We didn’t talk about it, but I think we all felt it. I remember I looked at Captain Twice-Over. We always kind of were a little apprehensive of him. He was a tough guy. Strict. A very good soldier, great captain. Deserved his rank one hundred percent. But strict. And now I was looking at him, and I saw his smile. I’d never seen him smiling before.

“We decided to heat some of our rations up. They taste better hot. At least, that’s what we believed. We never really ate them hot. You’re supposed to just open them and eat them. That’s what the regulations say. Some boys said they’d tasted them hot when they worked at the kitchen. Beebee said he did. He said it was the best the rations can taste.

“So we wanted to try them out. I was worried the captain would forbid it. So we tried to keep it hush-hush.

“We didn’t come up with anything smarter than digging a pit and putting some of our ammo clips there. Ammo clips and some combs we’d gathered in the hives. Sap then detonated them, and then we started blowing the fire. And I was looking all the time to see if the captain was coming our way.

“The fire was rising. It was somehow so very good to see it in those canyons. We were heating our rations up on it, but I was just looking at the fire. We all were. We burned everything we had, pretty much. It was impossible to eat, but we still ate it. I guess it was really as good as the boys said.

“But that day, that day, I guess we still anticipated a fight. That day was quiet, but we knew the next one wouldn’t be. But when it came, it was just like the last one. No explosions. No bug sounds. No scrambling the fighters. It was another quiet day.

“I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. None of the boys could. Before, it was day after day after day of fighting or waiting for a fight. Now? We didn’t even have any assignments aside from guard duties and an occasional tech check. It was like we were living in a different world now. Like the war had ended.

“We spent maybe a week like that. And then they took us to Skor II. I thought I was ready. I kept telling myself this peace was a temporary thing. But in the end, I was unprepared.

“I remember how it felt in our LAAT and then on _Virile_. Everybody was putting their brave faces on. I was, too. But I knew. Even then I knew. That... I knew there was a taint in me now.

“I’ve seen the other way. How things could be.

“I was trying to keep the past in the past. To return to my memories to boost my morale, not to dwell on them. I was afraid to think it will come again. That blissful quiet. It was unbearable to think about. Like thinking about something I knew I couldn’t protect.

“And so I started thinking about the future instead. How the war will end. Really end. And I started thinking how I could end it. I didn’t believe I had it in me at first. No, I didn’t... I didn’t seriously think about it at all. It was just a dream. My dream. But I kept dreaming it and dreaming it, and in the end, it became so vivid that it turned into a plan.

“We were stationed on Christophsis immediately after the battle. There was some trouble bringing us to Skor II. The Seps controlled the Llanic then. So the command couldn’t move us straight to another fight. But there, it was different. On Christophsis. We were heading to battle now.

“So they couldn’t deliver us straight to Skor. There were talks of them taking us to Denon. To replenish the troops. And then to take the Hydian Way to Skor. I don’t know why they didn’t do it at once. It seems like an obvious option. It’s much safer that way.

“But there was a delay while we stayed on Christophsis. I don’t know why. But I was thinking the entire time. Dreaming. And planning.

“I decided: if they take us to Denon, I’ll run. If not, I’ll stay. That’s how I decided. It didn’t seem too likely they’d bring us to the Inner Rim. But it didn’t seem too likely they’d send us straight to Skor, either.

“Now I see it. I mean, I can confess now. I would’ve run either way. I couldn’t stay. Not after that week on Geonosis. But then, I was making excuses for myself. Not to look as bad. I know what I did was bad. Knew back then, too.

“Sometimes, I wish I didn’t have that week. It would’ve been more right that way. But I had it. I had it.

“I planned to steal a shuttle at first. A dumb plan. A missing shuttle is going to be noticed at once. You physically cannot fly it out of the hangar without anyone noticing, that’s just... impossible.

“Then I got this idea... There were going to be reinforcements on Denon. So the boys were saying. So they’d need to land the dreadnaughts. When you have several battalions to load, you don’t use dropships.

“And if they land them, I thought, they’d run some diagnostics on the ships themselves. Some light repair was due. And in spaceports, they have those scaffolds to work with large ships. So I thought I’d get away by one of those.

“It’s maybe our third day on Christophsis, and Iggy comes to the barracks. ‘Guess what,’ he says, ‘we’re going Inner after all!’ And just... just everybody starts laughing and cheering. Even I cheered with everybody else. I forgot about my plan then. Forgot I was supposed to run for real now. I was happy we’ll have some more quiet.

“We didn’t. Not on Denon. It was all drills. Some official was there. Mighty worried we’d do poorly on Skor. He had us square-bashing all the time. It was worse than fighting. When you’re fighting, you don’t think about it. You don’t fear the next fight. You’re relieved to be fighting now rather than tomorrow.

“Then I realized I won’t be able to run. Not with a regimen like that. I don’t know. It was a relief, I guess. I don’t really remember how I felt then. It’s weird, but I don’t remember that at all.

“The thing is, the boys who were supposed to reinforce us hadn’t arrived at Denon yet. Not even five or six days after we had got there. Some hiccup on the way. That official, he couldn’t wait for them anymore. We knew he was leaving in four days for Coruscant.

“So I spent those four days guessing if our reinforcements were going to come before the official left. If they did, the chances were we’d get all shipped to Skor II ASAP to entertain the governor or whatever he was. Two days passed, then three days. Our boys were still not there. That’s when I realized I still had my chance to escape. They had scaffolding there, so I had all the routes planned: how to get to them from the ship, how to leave the spaceport. Everything.

“But when that guy left, our command became much more lenient. We started getting one-day leaves. It was like a lottery when a computer picks your name. I knew I wasn’t going to get one before the deployment, so I decided I’d go with my plan. There simply wasn’t a chance I’d get a leave in the space of those, I don’t know, couple of days or a week it would take the fresh kids to get on Denon. Not with my luck. I mean, I wasn’t called Runt just because there was one guy less lucky than me back in the labs.

“But I got the leave the second day. The second day. I remember sitting at breakfast. I had an hour before my leave started. I knew I was going to do it. Was going to run. I knew and I sat there smiling because I knew. The boys didn’t even ask me why. I was going on a leave. It was obvious.

“I just walked out. I wasn’t scared. I was excited. I knew I was doing something irreversible. Something that could end with me being court-martialled. And I was excited. I knew I was abandoning my comrades. Now I feel shame. But not back then.

“There were twenty of us going out. Boys who got a leave that day. But it was that lottery thing. We barely knew each other. Different companies.

“I just sort of wandered away. At the train station. There weren’t many people there. It was pretty early in the morning, I guess. And I just stayed behind a while. The other boys got on a train. I did, too. Just a different car. I was ready to run if they noticed I wasn’t there. Wasn’t with them. But they didn’t, and I got off on the next station.

“It was some bad district. Close to the spaceport and all. But I walked through it for several hours. Didn’t have anywhere to go. Just walked in circles before I noticed I’d been there before. Then I started going along the railway.

“People were looking at me. I remember that very well. I mean, no wonder. I was still dressed in armor and everything. Had my weapons on me. It was actually an order. That we carry our guns when on a leave. The command feared that we could be attacked. I don’t know who’d attack us.

“I had some money. They gave us like a hundred credits. To those who were going to the city. And I wasted them the first night. Rented a room. A fancy hotel. Good that they had dinners included, because I didn’t have any credits left.

“I can’t say I was thinking ahead. All my plans ended on me escaping.

“But the next day, I was standing in the street. No money. Pretty sure they’d started searching for me then.

“The only thing I knew that moment was that I wasn’t going back. I remembered the boys. The captain. It was painful. But I wasn’t going back.

“So I figured I’d sell my armor. Had no idea how much it’s worth. So I went back to that seedy district near the spaceport. Told myself they wouldn’t be looking for me there. That they would think I was trying to run as far as possible. No idea if I was right, but I didn’t meet any patrols.

“I started going from shop to shop, just offering them to buy my armor. Some owners thought I was a provocateur. Just straight up told me to get out. One offered to pay me five thousand for my rifle. Maybe I should’ve agreed. I didn’t. I betrayed my companions, but I couldn’t betray my rifle. Strange.

“Well, in the end, I managed to get two thousands and some change for my helmet. Some young guy in the street. I don’t know what he needed the helmet for. Said he didn’t need the rest of the armor. It was evening by then. I was desperate.

“I didn’t want to burn through my money in twenty days, so I didn’t go back to the hotel. Maybe they were waiting for me there already. I bought some civilian clothes. Had to discard the armor. Just left it in a corner. Bought a bag for my guns.

“I lived in a drain for a couple of days. There were people there. They didn’t care I was a clone. They didn’t care about anything as long as I didn’t come too close. Drug addicts, probably.

“I would watch the sky every day. Hoped to see the ships leaving. Told myself they wouldn’t put a hold on the operation just to catch me. They’ve got MP for that. I... I really didn’t want to look the boys in the eyes. If they caught me... I mean, I’d prefer them not to learn I was a traitor. Maybe they’d think I got assaulted.

“That was a tough time for me. That’s when I realized I was a traitor. Realized it for real. I sat there in the sewers for days and could think about nothing else. Just about how I betrayed the boys. The Republic.

“But then I... then my pride got the better of me. I say pride, but I don’t mean it in a bad way. I’m identical to a Human. Why shouldn’t I have pride? I started thinking if what I had done was really so bad. I’d seen so much bad stuff. The whole project they got going on Geonosis... Was I really wrong to betray all that?

“I knew it was wrong to betray my brothers. But what if... what if, I asked myself, they were in the wrong? Misguided? We were fighting for the people who’d made us just to fight for them. So that they didn’t have to. Was that right?

“The more I thought about it, the more it appeared that I was almost right to desert. How could I keep fighting for the Republic after what I’d seen it doing? How could anyone?

“But atrocities... even what I saw... that’s not enough to justify betraying your brothers. Wasn’t enough for me, anyway. Not enough unless I did something for them. To... unless I made a difference.

“So I decided I would make it. Whatever it took me. I admit it wasn’t my purpose when I ran. But I decided I would make it my purpose. I would make my life right.

“You know the rest. I suppose Theodane told you. How I found him and all that. Well, that concludes it.”

That concludes it indeed.

Or does it? Wasn’t it three blaster bolts that concluded everything for the clone?

It wasn’t Krev’s fault. Bad planning, and not on his part.

Would you go to another war now?

In all honesty, no. He wouldn’t. Not after Atnakis.

The clone was right to desert.

And right to want to change something. To make the difference.

It’s not my war, Krev thinks. Mine ended a long time ago.

You made it yours. You killed a combatant of it. Then rented your brain out to his ghost. You claimed it as it did you. You break it, you buy it.

Will life on Kessel get better if this war ends?

No. But Krev’s will: it’s his war now, after all.

Krev pinches his septum. No, it’s not, he lies.

Brate... that poor son of a bitch who wasn’t anyone’s son, he made a right choice after a right choice. He was right to run from the war -- everybody should. Let the war die like fire dies without oxygen. And he was right to fight it -- not the other side, but the war itself. Right to try.

He was wrong once, though.

When he trusted Alnam.

Alnam fights a good fight, too. What’s better than to protect your interests? What’s better than to return a victor to the trembling masses that have exiled you?

Alnam will fix things. He’ll fix them alright. He’ll fix everything that’s bad in the Galaxy -- for Vygo Alnam.

He wasn’t fighting when he was the Supreme Chancellor’s best pal, was he?

Sure, but he stopped being the current one’s best pal exactly the moment he started fighting. Exactly the moment he spoke up. He didn’t have to, but he spoke up: for the rights of the systems. Isn’t that what you always supported? So what’s your problem with Alnam now?

That he’s more successful that you could ever hope to be? In this and everything else?

No, it’s not that. Krev’s old enough to know redistributing wealth just changes who the rich people are, it doesn’t make more of them. He’s fine with rich people. All the better if they’re artsy to boot -- like the ones he used to smoke with in the toilets of artsy nightclubs on Coruscant. Couldn’t have gotten along better.

There’s something else. Doesn’t take a herder to smell banthashit.

Not when the pile’s this large.

Vygo Alnam, the champion of the seceding worlds. The only voice of reason in the Republic. How the liberal press hailed him before the war!

But wasn’t he his own champion even back then? Why wouldn’t he be?

For someone doing business on that scale, the secession of systems is nothing if not a business opportunity. Companies closer affiliated with the state won’t do deals with these systems. Won’t sell them stuff. Won’t open branches there. Won’t hire ex-citizens. Alnam wasn’t so restricted: perks of being a self-made man.

But when the Senate reacts with sanctions to any talks of secession... That’s one way to lose all your hard-earned potential profits.

Now Krev feels stupid. Plenty of people pointed that out back then. Many have retracted their words, true, when Alnam did not retract his once the war started. Thought he was for real.

But it wasn’t that. It was that the Chancellor wouldn’t take Alnam back at that point.

There was no going back. Why? Only one answer comes to mind.

Because Alnam had supported the other side. Openly enough for the people in power to know.

And now? Now Alnam wants everyone gone: Palpatine, Dooku, the Muuns, everyone. They are holding him back. While they’re fighting their war, Alnam can’t make money -- and won’t be able to as long as they remain in power. There’ll be no truces with them on the point. No lifting of the sanctions. No free-trade zones. So Alnam fights his war to stop this one.

Because ironically, this one is bad for business. Alnam’s business.

It just makes sense, right? Expose the Chancellor and the Count for what they really are. End the war. Become the savior of the Galaxy. Ban the clones -- should go without saying after what the public is going to learn about lobotomized soldiers. Ban the Trade Federation battle droids for good measure -- won’t be hard nowadays, either.

Enter Alnam RoboTech’s battle droids.

Enter business opportunities galore.

Nice scheme you got there, Devin. Too bad there’s no proof of anything.

But there are proofs, Krev thinks. Remember Ordulann. A joint venture of the Republic and the CIS firms.

Of which there is no proof, either.

I’ll get you your proof. You just wait.

He goes through every firm listed in the Ordulann heading. Looks each one up: any connection to Alnam counts.

Not a thing.

He tries another approach. Looks for any matches on Alnam RoboTech’s list of subsidiaries.

Subsidiaries: thousands. Matches: none.

He orders extracts from the Republic Tax Register for all the dozen Republic companies that now make up Ordulann. The costs round up to almost a thousand credits.

Krev groans. It’s all useless. Nothing says Alnam has anything to do with Ordulann. He’s not the only one smart enough to see that doing business with the secessionists is more lucrative than not.

He waits for the extracts. The register promises to deliver them in five workdays.

His Shadowfeed soldiers soldier on. Sorval reports to him daily. The ConCare boys are the hottest topic on the Shadowfeed now, he claims. The discussion has been slipping into the Holonet too. We should expect some huge thing to go off, Alnam warns him, just to draw the discussion away from the boys.

Krev nods to the old man. He expects that and much more.

They have a beer with Sorval every evening. The demonman is all reformed: not a bad word from him. He’s Krev’s best buddy. Not much of a demonman now. Krev preferred the old Sorval.

 _The Coruscanti Citizen_ runs a piece on the many secret paramours of Count Dooku the next week. Sorval reports: the response is lukewarm. Nobody cares. Nobody cares unless there’s some lobotomy involved.

Don’t get too happy, Sorval says. It’s not a mainstream thing. A regular law-abiding citizen of the mighty Republic hasn’t heard anything about ConCare -- save for rumors he’ll be sure to dismiss as banthashit.

Let him, says Krev. Baby steps, baby.

The extracts come one day late. The disappointment doesn’t stop there: no clues connecting any of the companies to Alnam RoboTech. Barely anything at all: just really brief information about the founders.

Krev starts to think about checking all the subsidiaries one by one. The list goes on for sixty-eight pages, so he retreats. He’s not strong enough. Not yet.

Sumar calls him a day after.

“Interested in some work, Devin,” the Ubb asks, “or do you roll with the Dugs now?”

“I thought that was your prerogative. Haven’t been carved up yet, I see?”

“Just visited Gzulla a couple days back. He says you’ve been frequenting his place lately.”

“Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. What’s up?”

Krev doesn’t need more work -- but he’d rather listen to it anyway.

“You heard about the terrorist attack?”

“Sure.”

No explanation required: on Telos IV in the past week, the terrorist attack is the one and only breaking into the embassy.

“Well, the Reps are not gonna leave it like that. There’ll be somebody coming to the planet in two weeks.”

“Someone as in?”

“An investigator. Ah, Devin, you’re just the best and the brightest. A real hope of the Human race. Okay. So I signed you up to be, you know, the local guide.”

“Wait,” Krev says in a bout of inspiration, “it’s that woman again? She’s hiring me? No thanks. The last time was one time too fucking many.”

“Do you even watch news? She’s gone, the whole fucking embassy is.”

“I though there weren’t any victims.”

“There weren’t. They’re gone because of some political shit. Maybe they staged the fucking crash to make the big shots reconsider. Well, it didn’t work, if so. Anyway, there’ll be somebody coming, and you’re gonna provide the invaluable local knowledge to them.”

“What kind of money are we talking about?”

“Ten G, two of which go to me for organizing the whole thing.”

Krev whistles. Not enough to buy him a livelihood on Coruscant, but much more than your standard fare.

“Yeah,” Sumar says, “it’s some serious shit. Easy money, too -- unless you fuck everything up.”

Think. The investigation isn’t going to find shit -- the aircar is probably taken apart by the scavengers already. But if you partake in said investigation... can be a good opportunity to shake Alnam down for some credits.

Are you still going with that plan? I thought you were going to expose the old fuck.

We’ll see, Krev tells himself.

He tells Sumar, “Shit, sign me up, daddy-o.”

“Already did. What would you do without me, Krevvie boy?”

At first, Krev gets angry: now he’s in doubts if he should go against Alnam. He rereads the diary again, but the impact is sort of lost.

Are you really going to run with the money?

He can’t answer. To keep all the doors open -- or to keep the illusion he’s doing that -- he goes back to his research. He can swear nobody, not a single damned taxman has ever spent as much time digging up old documents and articles.

He focuses on Forakk for two days. Jackshit.

Then he focuses on Ulmis.

Nothing comes up in relation to Alnam. He orders a register extract on Ulmis, too.

He keeps digging. He starts going through the subsidiaries. Searches for each combined with Ulmis, Ordulann, and every part thereof.

It’s stupid, he tells himself.

No it’s not, he replies. Alnam really didn’t want me prying in the Forakk affairs. There is something to it.

Ulmis and Ordulann fund Forakk. Forakk is somehow connected to Dangor Industries. Dangor Industries is run by the sister of the guy with the majority stake at BioTech. BioTech owns ConCare. ConCare makes lobotomized clones.

Alnam really wants ConCare ousted, but doesn’t want you to go looking into Forakk.

But the Dangors might as well own Forakk, right? Why is Alnam so protective of it, then?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Or maybe let’s: let’s be crazy about it and say both Alnam and the Dangors are neck-deep in this. Machinations, lobotomies, tax evasion. You name it, they got it.

Maybe Forakk used to be a joint thing. Maybe Ordulann was Alnam’s and Ulmis belonged to the Dangors. Maybe they were doing some insane outsourced military research for the Republic.

Case in point: ConCare. Case in point: the Geon. project.

But then something went tits-up between the lovebirds. Probably originated in the corridors of the Senate. Alnam was Valorum’s buddy. Ars Dangor is Palpatine’s buddy.

Interests so vested make Krev’s head hurt.

Maybe the Dangor siblings took over Forakk, and now Alnam doesn’t want you to find out he’s guilty as sin of whatever they’ve been doing? The ConCare page mentioned lobotomies -- in terms as vague as you can conjure up not to weird the public out when talking about lobotomies -- well before the war. _New Heights Reached,_ right?

Meaning there had been older heights.

Forakk sounds like a small fish for someone like Alnam, but Krev’s sure there are more things going on. Who says it’s the only business the Dangors took over? Or maybe the old man doesn’t let even something small like this slip.

The extract comes the day it’s supposed to. No new data.

Krev looks up Supreme Chancellor Valorum together with Ulmis, Ordulann, Forakk. Nothing. The Supreme Chancellor must have been smarter than this -- or he wasn’t on it.

Krev doesn’t give up. He’s on a trail now -- all the rest be damned.

If Alnam really was involved with Forakk or Ulmis or Ordulann, there must be some traces of it.

Krev spends a day digging up the names of Alnam’s assistants. Looks each up against the companies.

No matches.

Okay. Let’s try another approach.

It looks like Krev’s running out of approaches. It doesn’t dishearten him: the spice doesn’t let his spirits drop.

What if there are more literal traces?

Ulmis is based on Artesia.

Krev has a list of names to feed to the search tool, then.

He doesn’t need it. The second result is a holopicture titled “alnam_artesia_meeting_21111”.

On the picture: Vygo Alnam stands next to two Muuns and two other Humans. Above them: a gigantic holographic logo of Ulmis Systems.

The _Artesian Times_ article itself is lost to time, but the picture remains. Thanks to some scavenging Holonet algorithms, it’s still there, staring at Krev Devin twelve years later.

“Is anything amiss, Mr. Devin?” Alnam asks him the next time they meet.

“No. Why?”

Alnam peers into his eyes. Then he blinks and says, “No reason. Let us go back to business.”

Let’s, Krev thinks.

And he also thinks: I’ve got you, you son of a bitch. I’ll make sure you end up in the same place you want to put all your pals and enemies and take your money if I can help it.

For Brate.

For the ConCare boys.

For the fucking Galaxy.


	15. Vad Alnam VIII

“May I ask you if there is any reason you wanted to see me one-on-one, sir?”

Onoile Ven smiles -- against Alnam’s expectations.

“Do not worry, Vad,” he says still smiling. “I’m not going to put you and Agent Apani face to face.”

Ven sits down on his table in one swift, swirling motion. Picks up a hand gripper and gives it a few clenches. The sunset paints his office dark orange.

“You did exceptionally well,” Ven says. “Both of you. Got the perps in under a standard month,” he snaps his fingers, “now that’s what I call being off to a good start.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The senator is especially glad, I take it?”

“He sent Mtoro some crazy plant. She had to hire a cargo cab just to get it home.”

“Oh yes?” Ven’s smile grows even wider. “And what did he send you -- if you don’t mind telling?”

Alnam chuckles. “Two bottles of Alderaanian brandy.”

“Oooh.”

“I consider opening one this weekend. Would you like to join me, sir?”

“Oh, no. I don’t drink. But thank you.”

“Well, let me know if you suddenly have second thoughts.”

Ven gives a small laugh.

Small’s fine by Alnam -- best not to become a clown to your bosses.

“It’s well deserved,” Ven says, “so enjoy it. Hell, crossing that precipice? How many agents do you think would do the same? Between the two of us, the only reason you’re not being given a medal is that guy you stunned.”

“As I mentioned in my report, he was reaching for something on his desk, which could’ve been a self-destruction sensor as well as his cafstim cup.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Vad. I know how it is. And let me tell you: the Chancellor knows it too.”

Now that’s a surprise.

“The Chancellor knows about our operation? To be honest, I never though Senator Dibasi was actually that close--”

“Oh, not from the senator. From the RDS.”

“In which case, I didn’t think the Chancellor has time for such minutiae of our service.”

Ven’s face shows the surprise of a teacher whose bright student just asked him a really dumb question. “The Chancellor has time for everything. Honestly, it’s a bit uncanny just how much he knows about everything. So naturally, he’s informed about how your case went.”

He falls silent, but his face is mischievous.

Alnam raises his eyebrows.

“Well, you’ll have an extra reason to be happy this Fete,” Ven finally says. “But there’s still a ton of work to be done before that. Is there any news about Fozatta?”

Flashback to the scene of arrest: all the recording equipment kindly provided by _Fozatta Records._

“Not much, I’m afraid. We haven’t been able to locate him. Not a huge surprise given how much money the man has.”

“Please go on.”

“His assistant on Skados doesn’t really seem to know where Fozatta is.”

“That Giles fellow, right?”

“You are correct, sir. I should ask you again to have him transferred to Coruscant, as he acted as a mediator between Fozatta and the secessionists. And he is very much willing to talk.”

Ven nods thoughtfully.

“The sooner he is transferred,” Alnam presses on, “the better. I’ve had to question him via holofeed the last two times, and the connection isn’t the best. Additionally, I have my doubts where the loyalties of the Skados police lie -- which I have voiced in my report.”

“I think we’ll figure something out. The Skadosi senator has started a push against the local establishment already, so the police probably have other priorities than obstructing our investigation. On the other hand, seeing as Giles is crucial to said investigation on which their careers might depend, it would indeed be wise to arrange a transfer.”

“Precisely.”

“Do you have anything to add on the Fozatta case?”

“I do, sir. My mother is currently on Coruscant. I was planning to pay her a visit.”

Understanding comes to Ven’s eyes a millisecond after Alnam finishes the sentence.

“Oh yes,” Ven says. “The Baroness might know something.”

Alnam shrugs. “I’m not putting too much hope into it, if I’m being honest. But there’s going to be this huge function. Art elites. The Observatory Hall in Dittar is rented. I will mingle with said elites and see if there’s anyone who’s heard a thing or two about Fozatta.”

“Good thinking. But tell me, when is this gathering taking place?”

“Next Centaxday, sir.”

Ven considers it for a moment. “Very well. Let you then explore any connections at the party. But whatever leads you uncover, your partner may have to follow without you.”

Alnam jerks his head quizzically -- a good tone in the RDS.

“You have another trip awaiting you. Telos IV.”

“Telos IV? I don’t think I’ve heard about it, sir.”

“Small wonder. It’s a backwater planet. Not even a part of the Republic, just an affiliated world. Six days ago, an attack was carried out on our embassy there.”

“Separatists?”

“I doubt that. There was no damage to the personnel, so it doesn’t look like the CIS had anything to do with it. However, I don’t want to impose my opinion on you.”

“Of course, sir.”

“There are a few more things. It’s technically an RI case, so you’re going to Telos as an observer. I don’t expect you to crack this one.”

Alnam’s fine with that. He’s still high on Skados VI adrenaline. A little rest could do him good -- before his organism demands more of the heavy stuff.

But you gotta show ambition, so he shows some.

“With all due respect, sir, I believe I have deserved something better than this assignment.”

“I never said you haven’t. That’s another thing. I have another assignment for you.”

There goes the little rest.

“This is why I’m sending you. I have read both your and Agent Apani’s reports from Skados. I paid great attention to the details. What strikes me the most about you, Vad, is not even the ease with which you saw the case through. It’s how secretive you are. Don’t take it as an insult -- I mean it in a good way. What way isn’t good for our field of work, anyway? You are secretive. You kept what you were doing clandestine even from your partner. The regulations specify you shouldn’t do it, but here is where I disagree with the regulations. If you can keep vital things hidden even from somebody you’re meant to trust, you can keep them hidden from those you aren’t.”

Ven almost kicks himself up, so rapidly he leaves his perch and starts strolling his office.

“We have intercepted a very peculiar transmission originating on Telos, and we believe the Republic Intelligence doesn’t yet know about it. This transmission seems to be the source of the rumors that have been circulating online for the past week or so.”

Alnam remembers his first assignment -- the unofficial one -- with the RDS. Kram Midduk’s tendrils trembling.

Here we go again, it seems.

“Rumors of what nature are we talking about, sir? It appears I’m somewhat out of the loop on the latest gossip.”

“Rumors that the Republic brainwashes its soldiers. That kind of rumors.”

“Just to clarify--”

“It is true that clone soldiers undergo certain... indoctrination as a part of their training, for the lack of a better word. However, this is done in accordance with the general cloning practices and requirements of the law. Any assumption that there are brain surgeries being conducted on them is preposterous. This is what makes the lies so dangerous: that they almost follow reality.”

Alnam nods. “Do we know who exactly is behind these rumors?”

“In the most general sense, we do. They are all over the Shadowfeed, so it’s a given. But it’s up to you to find the executors. All we know is that the signal came from a relay on Telos’s orbit once and then got cut off immediately in less than ten seconds. The discussion page created in that incident was deleted a minute after. Given that’s the only such occasion so far, there’s a good chance this slip is indicative of where the real base of operations is.”

“What am I to do when I do find them, sir? As far as I understood, I must do it in a way the RI doesn’t hear a thing. That can prove problematic.”

Ven throws his hands up. “How can we decide right now? We know next to nothing about it. Maybe it’s one guy who gets paid a thousand credits a week to post that crap. Maybe there’s an underground battle droid factory in addition to that one guy. You will have to act based on the situation at hand. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me -- but only with me.”

Alnam nods. “Do you think this case can be related to the attack on the embassy?”

“I don’t really think so.” Ven purses his lips. “It would be pretty stupid to attract attention to the planet like that. But it’s possible. If the incidents are related, make sure not to intervene with the RI.”

“I know better than that, sir.”

“We want to one-up them, not to start an inter-department war.”

“Of course.”

“Your contact with the Republic Intelligence is Rengart Lawrie. He’s a good detective, so be careful around him.”

“I’ve heard about Lawrie.”

“Oh yes?”

“Some colleagues of mine -- former colleagues, I mean, in the CorSec -- had to work with him. Said he’s got his head up his ass on everything that concerns his ego. As in, remembers every time he shook hands with Isard.”

Ven smiles. “Wouldn’t surprise me. The Director has a very magnetic presence. At least, to a certain type of people. It’s great that you have Lawrie’s weakness figured out. Still, don’t go overboard with him.”

“Duly noted, sir.”

“Your other contact -- the one you must keep secret from everyone, Lawrie most of all -- is a local by the name of Krev Devin. I’m told he is quite streetwise. He’s done some work for the Republic. Let’s hope he’ll be of assistance to you.”

.

.

.

Alnam wears his best suit to Dittar. The head waiter of the Observatory Hall still looks unimpressed.

The Observatory Hall takes up the hotel’s top floor. You can hardly stargaze from here: speeder lanes go past its two transparent domes. The place’s proper fancy, though -- even got telescopes. The crème de la crème love this stuff.

The crème de la crème: split in small groups. Sitting at round tables. Dancing to the bandfill music. Good jatz -- Sevrona K’Meli’s _Looking Out._ Not as good without Sevrona singing. Take a hint: today’s not for the most important people.

Two semicircle sets of stairs go around the scene and up to the second level of the hall. That little platform sits right under the smaller of the domes. If Alnam knows his mother, that’s where she should be -- overlooking her domain.

And there she is, at the table in the middle of the platform. How very egalitarian of her.

“Vad!” She gets up, her dark-silver dress tasteful enough not to reflect light. “My dear boy!”

Her embrace is both firm and distant. Alnam can’t blame her for that. Can for a few other things.

“Mother.”

The fragrance of Strenua, the Baroness of Talated: a weird wild forest. Alnam can smell all the impossible creatures killing each other.

“Do join us.”

She points at her table. Three men sit at it: a senior Pantoran -- Alnam knows he knows him, but cannot put his finger on the name. A Human ten or twelve years older than Alnam, clad in a military tunic. Another Human of no more than twenty, very sharply dressed -- his necktie changes its color gradually and mesmerizingly.

“You surely remember the good Baron Papanoida.”

The Pantoran bows.

Alnam reciprocates. “Pleasure to see you again, Your Lordship.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

“This,” his mother takes Alnam by the elbow and turns him ever so slightly to the fop, “is Aewarr Nogolle of the Denon System Civil Alliance. And this,” a courteous nod to the officer, “is Captain Wilhuff Tarkin of the Republic Navy. Soon to be Admiral Tarkin,” she half-whispers to Alnam -- but so that Tarkin can surely hear. “A true hero of the Battle of Podana.”

Half the men Alnam knows would have oversold themselves with fake humility at this remark. Tarkin just nods.

“Meet my son Vad Alnam, a member -- and a very valuable one -- of the RDS.”

“Vad, my boy,” Baron Papanoida says once Alnam and his mother take a sit, “please tell me there is a meaning behind this acronym other than what I think it is.”

Great. A bleeding heart. Now you’ve got to play a right-wing zealot for him -- that part comes with the job -- without alienating everybody present.

“I’m not sure what it is you think, Your Lordship.”

A droid waiter comes with a small trolley of cocktails.

“The last time we met, you were a detective in the planetary security force, I believe,” the Baron says. “Such a noble vocation! And to exchange it for the RDS?”

“It was a noble vocation, but not a well-paid one.”

“It’s truly a thing of horror how readily the youth abandon what is right for what is easy.”

“Come and work for us, Your Lordship, if it’s easy for you. We can certainly use your resourcefulness.”

The Baron flings his arms up.

“Oh, Vad,” the Baroness says, “you’re upsetting the poor Baron!”

“It was never my intention. I simply do not understand the hostility towards the Domestic Security. We are keeping the order -- same as the police are doing.”

“Serving the Republic is nothing to be ashamed of,” says Tarkin.

Papanoida doesn’t look at him. “For now, perhaps. But are you sure, Vad, that you will be able to say the same in five years? What about ten?”

“And what is going to change in five to ten years, dear Baron?”

This time, the Pantoran meets the captain’s gaze. “Oh, we are having this conversation again, I see. As our Republic is heading into dictatorship--”

“Which is something you were saying five years ago as well as ten.” Tarkin’s smile is quick to come and to go.

“We didn’t know each other ten years ago.”

“I was following your public appearances, however.”

“Nothing I see today convinces me I was wrong ten years ago. Dictatorship is what awaits us. Now it is more apparent than ever.”

“I do not think -- with all due respect -- that this statement is justified, Baron,” Alnam says.

“Is that so? What about that awful piece of legislation proposed last year?”

Alnam’s not sure which one Papanoida’s talking about.

Aewarr Nogolle comes to the rescue. “The one that was meant to grant the Supreme Chancellor dictatorial powers? It didn’t come to fruition. The Chancellor rejected it outright.”

“It is just a play for the gullible, Aewarr! Do you really think they will not make another attempt?”

“I really don’t.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. You see, I have my sources in the Senate. My brother Thoris is Mr. Pestage’s aide.” Nogolle makes a series of short laughs. “He said the Chancellor was furious after the proposition. Like, you wouldn’t believe he can be that furious when you look at him.”

“Rather when you look at how the press paints him.”

“My brother is pretty much on a first-name basis with Mr. Pestage, so I say, he knows a thing or two about how the Chancellor really is.”

“It’s not that hard to make an impression, especially when the press essentially belongs to you.”

“What are you saying, Notluwiski,” the Baroness says. “Our mass-media are a cesspool, but to claim they are all in the Chancellor’s pocket... That is exactly the outrageous nonsense they are so fond of!”

“This argument is pointless,” says the captain. “The Supreme Chancellor was not amused by the proposition. Which means, my dear Baron, that your precious squabbles in the Senate are in no danger.”

“These squabbles, as you call them, are the foundation of the democratic principles.” Papanoida’s face slowly turns purple. “Would you rather somebody tell the Republic what to do?”

Tarkin raises his eyebrows. “I do not see how that would be different from the current situation, apart from the increased efficiency.”

“Strenua,” Papanoida says, “you seem to be deriving some bizarre pleasure from pitting me against the captain. You know full well how our conversations go every time, yet you insist on inviting me whenever he is attending.”

The Baroness turns to Alnam. Look what I have to deal with, her eyes are saying.

Alnam finds it hard to gather any sympathy for her.

He takes another sip of his cocktail and keeps watching.

“Trust me, Baron, I regret having you and Captain Tarkin in the same room every time. But then I start missing your,” the Baroness pauses and smiles, “squabbles, and the history repeats itself.”

Tarkin returns the smile. The Baron doesn’t. Nogolle sits with a cocktail in hand and his eyes on the table.

“Mother,” Alnam says, “a word, if you would?”

Baroness Strenua gives him a quick glance. Evaluates him. As she always does.

“And there I was thinking you came just to spend time with your mother,” she says. “Do forgive us, gentlemen.”

She leads him out to a balcony. Music behind them interweaves with the noise of speeders in front of them.

“How is your family doing, Son?”

A question to you, a question to me. Alnam expected nothing else.

“It’s fine. Yalgi thanks you for the gift.”

“Oh, he thanked me over the holofeed. He is a surprisingly polite young man.”

“And Ormi and I thank you for keeping it reasonable.”

The Baroness smiles. The lights coming from the Observatory Hall dance on her face.

“I can only imagine what your father gave him. Oh, let me guess: an outstanding donation to his bank account? Followed by an hour-long lecture about being responsible from a social outcast?”

Alnam chuckles. “Right on the money.”

His mother gives him a sly smile. “Good to know I still can predict Vygo.”

She takes a pause to kiss her cocktail glass.

“Ormi isn’t with you tonight,” she says afterwards.

Alnam can’t help but roll his eyes. “You should come work for the RDS, Mom. You’d make chief investigator in no time.”

“Oh, am I not supposed to pry in your personal life now? I’m sorry, Vad, but I don’t quite understand what’s going on between you. You’re still married, right?”

“Technically.”

“That’s something. But she’s not here, so I have to wonder what exactly the matter is.”

“The matter is that we’re... Must we really talk about it? I have something I need to ask you.”

“You met her on one of my galas, didn’t you? Yes, that’s how it happened. Oh, how you tried to impress her that evening!”

“Yeah, I’m sure it was the suboptimal number of your galas we attended that drew a wedge between us,” Alnam says. He puts his glass on the deck railing. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t need it. I’m fine.”

The Baroness’ face tells him all her thoughts.

“Alright,” she says. “Do as you will. What did you want to ask me?”

Alnam sighs. “You still rub elbows with Fozatta?”

“What do you mean, still? I never did. Never liked the man.”

“Any reason for that?”

“And here you go questioning your own mother.”

“We’re just having a chat, aren’t we?”

“Oh, Vad. You are very valuable to the RDS, after all.”

He waits.

“What are you doing there that you don’t know about Fozatta,” the Baroness gives up. “It’s all over the tabloids.”

Alnam remembers Midduk again. “I don’t exactly have time for tabloids.”

“Well, maybe you should subscribe to a few. It can help you solve you a case or three, by the looks of it. You see, Giburin -- as the whole wide Galaxy would tell you -- is a creep. That’s why I don’t rub elbows with him, as you so eloquently put.”

Alnam weighs that. “I might have heard something about it. Never gave it too much credence, though.”

“Oh yes? And why is that?”

“It was in tabloids?”

The Baroness laughs. “Then let me tell you something not from a tabloid. Nobody with a modicum of self-respect,” she makes a wide gesture with her glass towards the hall, “invites him anymore. For seven or eight years already, probably.”

“Really?”

“Don’t look at official occasions. Look at private parties. Nobody wants Fozatta at their poolside. That’s because everybody knows he is a pervert. He doesn’t skip anything that wants to make it into the industry, wears a skirt, and is remotely compatible with Human anatomy.”

“Is that a fact?”

“You bet it is. Ask anyone here if you don’t believe me.”

“Are we talking coercion or..?”

She shrugs. “We’re talking a man in power and a ton of naïve girls away from their homes. What would you call it, detective?”

“So how come he’s not deposed and arrested yet?”

Something like that requires a benefactor. Hasn’t Dibasi mentioned Fozatta has friends in the Senate?

See also: Fozatta’s elusiveness.

“You tell me,” the Baroness says.

Alnam thinks. “Any rumors about him lately?”

“I prefer to stay as far from that weasel as I can, Vad. What he’s up to doesn’t concern me.”

“Well, it concerns me, the funny thing is. Any idea who might know more?”

“As I said, no good sentient talks to him, so you’re unlikely to find anyone here who knows anything.”

“Oh, Mother, please, don’t tell me you invited everyone you know tonight. As if I didn’t know not being invited is a statement in and of itself.”

“I don’t want to name any names, but it astonishes me you haven’t checked Uscru clubs so far.”

Alnam guffaws. “I’ve spent some time doing just that back in the CorSec. Do you have any specific ones that astonish you the most?”

“He sponsors _The Flashbang_ outright, but that’s an official thing. Not the people I’d run to if I had the RDS on my back.”

“So?”

“See what clubs some of Fozatta’s best-paid artists sang in right after hitting their first big success. And I mean it: right after. Then check if they had performed in those clubs before their hit. If not...” She waves her hands.

Alnam nods. “Such a form of support screams paying back to me. Do you know what for?”

“I could make a guess, but what do my words matter?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say they are sort of talent recruitment agencies for him. Girls come to the clubs. Like beginning singers, fresh off a spaceship from the Mid Rim. Try to get a contract. Get offered a special type of contract. Fozatta then pays a finder’s fee to the club owner by providing him with a rising star. Makes sense, huh?”

The Baroness gives him a smug smile. “It’s getting cold, isn’t it? I see the weather control is just as poor as it’s always been on Coruscant. Come. I think Captain Tarkin has had enough shots of gin to start ranting about aliens.”


End file.
